


Calla and Klarion VS The Media VS Dick Grayson and Common Sense VS Everybody else

by MadiMay



Series: The Calla Universe, where nothing makes sense [3]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Alfred is laughing at you all, Bruce Wayne is So Done, But he does care, Calla is having none of that shit, F/F, F/M, Jason wonders why he keeps these dumbasses around, M/M, Multi, Protective Bruce Wayne, Slut Shaming, Social Media, attempted humor, the media - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19066840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadiMay/pseuds/MadiMay
Summary: Calla and Klarion might murder every single TMZ reporter soon. Bruce is too busy face palming to help. Tim and Damian bond over how stupid everyone else is. Alfred is silently laughing at all the dumb fuckery. Cassandra and Stephanie are the only ones with any kind of solution, and even that's not too great of one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the first of hopefully much more from these three! My only defense is that like 8 or 9-ish months ago my writing program completely crashed right when I was going through some shit and I lost EVERYTHING and didn't actually notice for a while, and so I had to rewrite a bunch of my stuff, but I've got a new, hopefully better, more foolproof system now, so here's hoping!

Calla was getting sick of this shit. She loved Dick and Klarion, loved them in a way that was warm and burning, intense and gentle, desperate and content all at once.

She wanted to be able to go to pick Dick up from the station and kiss him in front of his coworkers, to tag along with Klarion on his shopping trips in the shops that sold odds and ends for witchcraft, hanging off his arm and flirting with him the while. She wanted to take her boys out dancing or to dinner and not worry about being seen or if their outings would be featured in the Gotham Gazette the next day.

She didn't even care about the potential backlash they'd get for their polyamorous relationship, not really, but she and Klarion were recognizable in costume, even if they didn't get too much screen time, small fish in the hero and villain community that, besides their relationship with Nightwing known only to those closest to them, only were noteworthy due to their power.

But giving Nightwing or Richard Grayson weaknesses to exploit wasn’t something Dick was willing to do. Both of his masks were too famous to allow for targets. And their identities and relationship wove a complex enough web that it was not something to be considered lightly.

There are a lot of things Dick is willing to do for this relationship. There's a lot of things Bruce could overlook about their relationship. But the risk of their secret identities being exposed was not on that list.

Calla groaned and dropped onto Jason's couch, one arm over her eyes in a pose that was meant to look dramatic, but probably looked silly.

Jason gave her an unimpressed look, “I refuse to believe this isn't about that chick that felt up Dick at the Galla a few weeks back. You can put up with a lot of things Calla, but someone touching your things isn't one of them.”

Calla grunted, and kicked out in the direction of Jason's voice, coming up short by a good two feet, “They're my boyfriends, I'm allowed to not like someone touching them like that.”

Jason rolled his eyes, opening the fridge to root around in it, “You realize there is a fairly simple solution to this, right?”

Calla huffed, and said dryly, “Enlighten me, please.”

Jason tossed a water bottle at her, and Calla's hand shot out, just barely catching it before it hit her face.

“You ask Klarion to charm your necklaces so that anyone who doesn't know Dick's identity see's you and Klarion as different people.”

Calla launched the water bottle at Jason's head at more than playful speeds, “I'm not entirely comfortable asking Klarion for favors involving his magic. You know people used him for it, and we know Dick and I aren't, but that's still a sore spot i don't want to lean on.”

Jason rolled his eyes again, “Oh god, you're in one of those moods. Get off my fucking couch and come help me beat some assholes or leave, angsty Calla is not my friend.”

Calla snorted, “Only because i can out angst you.”

But Calla stood and grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the couch, slinging it on over her leather pants and black turtleneck. She produced the belt Dick had given her and her mask from her purse as Jason snatched his mask, hood, and jacket

She let herself turn white, and looked at Jason, “Let’s go then, off to soothe our souls with violence.”

Jason grinned and threw open the window. Calla took a running leap, throwing herself out of the penthouse window. For a single, weightless moment, she fell, arms outstretched, head thrown back, hair streaming like a white banner above her before years of instinct and practice screamed, and she shrugged the grappling hook she kept in her sleeve into her hand and aimed. The line shot out, went taught, and she swung so low cars honked and the scent of street litter and wet pavement filled her nose.

Then she was ascending, up and up and up, closer to the buildings on the opposite side of the street, reaching the breathless peak of her assent on the ledge of a rooftop across the road and a few buildings over from Jason’s apartment.

Pressing the button on the side of the grapple as she tucked into a ball and rolled to kill her momentum, the line shot back into the gun cleanly just as she popped upright. Jason appeared at her side like a ghost, and even without being able to see his face, Calla knew he was rolling his eyes,

“God, you’re in a MOOD today.”

Calla laughed, falling into step beside him as they started towards the gap in between this building and the next, “You already knew that. Shut up. Come on, let's remind the thugs of Gotham why they hate it when we patrol together.”

So they did, breaking into sprints, they leaps the gap, only having to traverse another two buildings before they happened upon a group of five men advancing on a pair of girls who couldn’t have been much older than 15, calling out vulgar, sickening things as they menaced closer.

Jason landed between the men and the girls in a crouch, and stood, guns clicking as he readied them. The thugs stopped, sharing a look that clearly read of apprehension, nervousness, and that they were about to try to do something they knew was very stupid.

Then Calla landed just behind him, rising out of a crouch and sauntering forward with all the deadly grace of a hunting wild cat. Her hands misted, eyes narrowing dangerously.

One of the men turned and spirited away, barreling onto the street and around the corner as Calla watched with an air of dark and distant amusement.

She asked as she cocked her head, raising a hand towards the group, “What do you think, red? Knee’s, or throats?”

Jason didn’t answer verbally, just raised his guns as shot out two of the thugs knee’s simultaneously past Calla.

She laughed, mostly for show, and gave the mental push that released her powers as two of the men collapsed with screams.

Just as the other two turned to run, she shot icicles through the backs of their knees. Ice and blood exploded outwards, and Jason and Calla moved forward, stripping the men of the knives they carried.

Neither bothered with calling the police, and as Jason went to the roof to watch for goons, Calla went to the girls, calming one from hyperventilation, before calling them a cab and handing them the cash and joining him.

Jason and she watched over the girls silently until the cab arrived, and Calla asked him, “Do you think the runner was just getting away, or reporting that we’re patrolling together to higher ups?”

Jason shrugged, “Don’t know.”

Calla shrugged, and they turned to continue.

Calla thought he had to have told someone Permafrost and the Red Hood were patrolling together, because they didn’t find much that night. No organized crime, one rape attempt, a handful of muggings, menacing a cat caller, and shaking down a dealer Jason had been stalking for the past week.

It was a slow night. So Calla and Jason parted a little after 3, and Calla took off across the rooftops home. Jason pulled out his phone.

Klarion answered quickly, “Jason.”

Jason paused, reconsidering the wording he had planned on, then threw all his fucks to give to the wind and spoke, “Calla’s feeling jealous and uncomfortably aware that no one outside the families is aware of her claim on either of you. Figure out a way to show the world all three of you are taken before it eats at her too much.”

Klarion sounded mildly baffled when he said, “What?”

Jason rolled his eyes, “You fucking heard me.”

Jason hung up and turned back to his patrol.

 

Calla laughed as her feet carried her across rooftops, jumping and falling and flying, feeling weightless and free in a way she only ever did when she could traverse Gotham alone. Everyone she might patrol with brought a different side out in her, different facets glittering clear under different lights. With Jason, she felt a bit wild, a bit like a wolf hunting with it’s pack, because that was it was. A hunt. A barely contained excuse for violence. Silent and swift and deadly. With Dick, it was a game, playful and always in motion, jumping and grappling to heights that made her head spin and her stomach drop and her heart soar.

When Klarion followed her, it was a very different kind of game, temptation and honey and traps, trying to get one another to tip the scale between neutrality one way or the other.

With Cass, it was them quiet and still and watchful. Sitting perched on rooftops, searching the city methodically for crime. A certain kind of peace that came from not needing to speak, not being expected to, just silent, certain, comradery and trust. Tim and she flew, stopping to exchange barbs or information playfully, teasing in a gentle way that came from understanding each others pasts a little too well, but always returning to the skies, always understanding why the height held such appeal. Damian or Duke she rarely patrolled with, but when she did she took them to get food and spent more time teasing and coaxing laughter than seeking out crime. Bruce and she patrolled together even more rarely, but when they did, she was a silent, steady shadow at his shoulder, an immovable force.

Now though, as she neared her home, all of Calla’s earlier irritation had drained away in the face of the wonderful, addictive feeling of flight.

Calla tucked into a roll that Dick had taught her to crest the lip of particularly high buildings, and braced herself for the jolt of pavement when she landed on her roof.

Calla laughed as she rolled onto her back, hair halo’d around her, eyes closed as she gasped in the night air. She felt sore and relaxed and glorious, coming down from the high of a good patrol as she was.

Her purse was still back at Jason’s house, and she’d need to go get that tomorrow, but her phone was safely tucked away in the hidden compartment of her belt, so that wasn’t too big a deal. At the feeling of little kitty feet crossing her belly and then her chest, Calla opened her eyes, smiling to find Teekel perched atop her sternum, blinking golden eyes at her.

She smiled, lifted a hand, and stroked Klarion’s familiar gently, relaxing further with a smile.

She lay there like that for several moments, petting Teekel, feeling the jolts of contentment that she knew belonged to Klarion through their link each time she touched him.

After long moments, Dick landed on the ledge across the roof, doing a little hop onto the little pavement courtyard and coming to sit beside her.

She smiled at him lazily, and sat up, curling an arm around Teekel as she scratched her fingers at the edge of his jaw.

Dick smiled back, and Calla knew if she could see the blue of his eyes she would be melting.

Calla stood, leaning to tuck herself into him as Teekel jumped down from her arms and wandered off.

She breathed in the scent of him fresh from patrol, his spandex and compact kevlar, hair gel and cologne, metal and the oh so faint scent of gunpowder.

“How was patrol?”

He nuzzled into the wind-knotted length of her hair, humming as he pressed closer, “Slow. Suppose I have you to thank for that.”   
She laughed a little, “Red Hood and I patrolled together, got a runner who must have told his higher ups.”

She felt Dick’s lips curl up as the met the skin of her throat, “Well, it gives Spoiler more time on that kidnapping case she found. No one will go missing while she’s holed up at the Batcave’s computer.”

Calla nodded, humming as she stretched her senses out trying to tell if they were being watched. They weren’t.

“We should go inside.”

Dick nodded, and Calla slung an arm around him as they started towards the door inside. Klarion was sitting on the couch when they came in, the TV was on, playing Supernatural, and Calla smirked.

Dick stripped off his uniform and mask, tossed them both onto a chair, and backflipped onto the couch beside him.

Calla laughed as Klarion hummed, automatically clearing the tome he had been half-heartedly flipping through from his lap as Dick curled on his side.

Calla’s heart melted at the sight of Klarion in fluffy PJ pants an an over-sized shirt of hers, Dick in boxer breifs, his head in Klarion’s lap, both loose and relaxed.

She turned for the bedroom, changing into sweatpants and a t-shirt then grabbing clothes for Dick and a blanket, because she just knew that for all of his shirtless showing off and claims of immunity to the cold, Dick liked being dressed warmly.

Twenty minutes later found the three quietly curled around each other, watching a TV show that really only Klarion kept up with, if only because he found it amusing how far off some of the magic of the show was, while others came so close to realism.

Calla frowned at the screen, where Sam and Dean were at each other’s throats, “Trickster episode?”

Klarion nodded absently as he started to braid Dick’s hair, “First one.”

Calla nodded, sighing, “He’s easily the best thing to happen to any kind of media ever.”

Dick snorted into Klarion’s leg, and said into the fabric, voice muffled, “Do we need to have another talk about why selling your soul to swap universes is a bad idea?”

Calla chuckled, “No, but we should take another look into how or why there isn’t some semblance of hunting like this in the real world since we know most of these things exist.”

Klarion smirked, “Because killing them is almost never this easy.”

There was silence as the episode on TV unraveled, and Calla hummed to herself as she started to drift off against Klarion’s shoulder.

She was pleasantly warm, wedged against Klarion’s side as she was and covered in blankets as they all were, just a little sore from her patrol, but loose and relaxed in a way that made it feel just a little wonderful.

Klarion smiled as Calla drifted off. She didn’t always end up in strange sleeping positions, but she could and did fall asleep in some truly odd ones. Now, she was curled up on her belly, knees tucked up to her chest under her feet flat against the arm of the sofa and tucked between the side and the couchin, one hand curled around her ribs in a protective way that always made Klarion’s chest clench, her other arm outsteatched to tangle with Dick’s on his lap. 

Her head was craned upright by where her face was buried against his waist, in a position he knew would leave a crick in her neck if he didn’t move her.

He would need to move them both to the bed in a few minutes. He would need to talk to Dick tomorrow, then Calla. Would need to figure something out, but for now he was content to watch good TV, and relax with Calla’s coolness on one side of him, Dick’s warmth on the other, and the scent of home surrounding him.

  
  


Dick smiled as he watched Calla and Cass spar across the cave. Though you would never guess it by looking at her, Calla was easily on par with him or any of his family. She'd been a fighter long before they got to her.

Part of it was experience, Calla knew how to read body language better than anyone and could dodge blows another person might not see coming. Part of it was natural, the way she moved, smooth and never where you expected her to be, even when you'd watched her fight before, always smart, even in this rushed and heated a thing. Part of it was in her determination to never again be a victim. She'd taken courses in 14 different kinds of fighting and self defense styles, and had reached above proficiency in all of them, and mastery in 9.

Part of it was how she controlled how people saw her, manipulating them into underestimating her. They saw big brown eyes and delicate bone structure, long hair and longer limbs, and they thought, delicate, fragile, breakable.

They didn’t see the strength of those limbs, how they let her lash out and dart back too quick for retaliation. They didn’t see how her gait changed in a heartbeat from something a little clumsy, goofy, and a little awkward, designed to be underestimated, to smooth as quicksilver, fast and confident and impossible to predict.

Dick couldn’t honestly say the first thing that had made Dick start to love her or Klarion, not for sure, but with Calla, he’d only first realized it in a moment exactly like this, standing in the cave, watching Calla spar with  _ Cass _ , and hold her own.

Klarion slipped up behind him, and tucked himself into Dick’s side, burying his face into Dick’s throat to ask, “Got them?”

Dick handed Klarion his and Calla’s necklaces to him silently, hers swiped during a kiss after she’d changed into her uniform kept at the cave.

Klarion took them and tucked them into his pocket, leaning up to kiss him quickly, before wandering back off to perform the spell he’d been preparing up in the manor.

Dick took a moment to watch Klarion’s ass shamelessly as he left, then glanced at Calla where she was ducking and weaving and throwing out blows, and stood straighter, turning to find Damian and be sure he had replaced his belts supply of fear-toxin antidote before patrol tonight.

 

Calla inhaled deeply from where she was perched on the ledge of a building in the center of crime alley, taking a break from patrolling. It had been a busy night thus far, but the city seemed to have calmed enough to let her take a breather.

Calla hadn’t grown up in Gotham. She had grown up in the ass end of nowhere just outside an average sized town in Colorado. She hadn’t come to Gotham til later in life, but it was her home, this city. It was noisy and polluted and riddled with crime and sometimes made her actually sick. It was a shithole, but it was a shithole that had her family, a shithole that let her soar, and a shithole that gave her love and freedom and violence and adrenaline galore.

Calla was snapped from her thoughts by a hand like a brand carding through her hair to cup the back of her skull. She didn’t bother glancing up, just leaned into the touch. Only Klarion burned her like that, so hot it should hurt, but it didn’t. It felt like heat being breathed into her body, frozen and all but dead. It was the feeling of life, of someone breathing air into lungs and the burning of gasping in air after too long without.

She turned, and Klarion was closer than she thought. She leaned closer, bumping noses before giving him a quick kiss. 

When she caught a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye, Calla twisted, kissing Dick too.

She turned to face them and cocked her head, “What’s up?”

Klarion reached over, handing her her necklace, and she frowned when she realized she didn’t have it on, “Put this on, we’re going out.”

Calla frowned but clasped it on, “Huh?”

Dick leaned in, brushing his lips along the shell of her ear, “A little birdie told us you want everyone to know we’re taken. And we happen to feel the same.”

Calla’s jaw ticked, “Jason.”

Klarion chuckled, “Don’t be angry at him, He was right to tell us. Now come, lets get some food.”

Calla sighed, but nodded, taking the bag and blue blouse handed to her and changing quickly, shoving her mask, belt, and coat into the bag, and letting what little warmth came naturally to her flood back into her system.

Klarion took one of their hands each, and they vanished from the rooftop.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both of these were written when I was high on dayquil and too much pepsi and alternating between sneezing and puking, but are somehow better than anything I've written in months and I hate it

Calla was just letting herself into their apartment after a long day at work, when her com beeped in her ear.

Damian’s voice, reluctant and terse, followed quickly, “Robin, requesting back up at Crunish street and 12th.”

Calla went on alert, dropping her bag to the couch and shoving on her patrol boots even as she hopped across the room for the hidden panel that had the rest of her costumes, even as she put her hand to her ear and replied.

“Permafrost, responding, 7 minutes out.”

Damian was getting better at asking for help when he needed it, and even when it was less needing and more wanting, but he still rarely asked for help so broadly, rarely asked any but Dick or Cass, sometimes Bruce, and very, very rarely, Jason.

She would likely be the closest, with the intersection only four blocks west and two blocks south, and with how breathless the boy had sounded during the short transmission, it wouldn’t do to be slow.

So Calla pasted her mask to her face, buckled on her belt, and transformed as she threw herself out the window, using her grappling line to send herself down a few blocks, then pulling it in and running across a roof and shooting it out down a street to swing a few more blocks down.

Only five minutes had passed when Calla was sprinting along the last few rooftops and the fight came into view.

Her blood  _ boiled _ . Damian might have been well trained, but he was a  _ child _ . That was something that many of the thugs of Gotham recognised and respected to some degree. Many of them refused to fight him the same way they would an adult, and that mercy gained those thugs a degree of gentleness from all of the bats.

Of course, Damian had been getting into it with Scarecrow these past few nights, and Scarecrow was as bad as the Joker, and as far as their goons… Well, like attracted like as Calla’s mother had always said.

Calla was glad to notice Jason racing across rooftops several blocks away in her dirrection as she reached the lip of the roof and dove off.

She made her landing by using Scarecrow’s temple as a springboard, launching off of it to get her hands on the shoulders of a thug trying to sneak up on Damian’s left flank, and used the momentum and his surprise to send him sailing into a sharp brick corner of a store front.

She landed in a crouch, and stood, whirling and stalking to Damian’s side, and suddenly, many of the thugs paused, clearly less sure of attacking a child when a larger, far more violent vigilante had come to his aide.

But she was a woman and he was a child and most of the criminal underground were misogynistic shits, so they came anyway.

Calla ran forward, dropping onto her hands to avoid a blow and rolling all her weight into kicking both of his knees. One blew out with a snap and crack, and the other she felt give under her foot a few inches. The man screamed and dropped, and Calla rolled to her feet, snatching his weapons just in case, on the rest of the goons in an instant.

She and Damian brought most of them down quickly, though she noticed his left arm was dislocated and his left calf was bleeding, and every protective older sister instinct she had lit with rage.

The fight was already almost done by the time Jason dropped behind them, but it ended in a spray of bullets that dropped the last of them, and Calla turned to Damian, dropping to a knee as she looked him up and down.

“Does this dislocation feel different in any way from the ones you’ve had in the past?”

Damina shook his head, and Calla nodded, “I’m going to set it then, and then we’re going to go back to the cave and had Agent A patch you up, alright?”

He nodded, and Calla said as she took hold of his bicep and braced his shoulder, and Jason came around to hold him still, “I’m proud of you for calling for help when you needed it, D.”

Damian tutted, looking away, though she saw the edge of a smile being suppressed for a moment before she set the joint.

He hissed, near silent, and tensed. Calla bit her lip and dropped to look at his calf.

“Sorry, kid.”

Damian growled, “I’m not a kid.”   
Calla snorted as she took the temporary bandages Jason handed her, “My youngest sibling is older than you. You will always be a kid to me. You did well though.”

Damian grumbled, but let her apply first aid to his injury.

Calla gathered him in her arms, and he let her, shivering a little, and Calla wondered briefly if he’d been hit with the fear toxin, before glancing to Jason, “Tell everyone he’s fine and we’re heading back to base to patch him up?”

Jason nodded, ruffled Damian’ hair too quick for retaliation, and said to Damian, “I’m proud of you too.”

Damian grumbled something about being too old for being babied, but buried his face in Calla’s curls as she pulled a small button from her belt to call Jason’s motorcycle to her.

He’d be pissy she got her hand on it again, but they needed a way to get Damian to the cave, and as far as she knew, neither of them could teleport.

When the bike pulled up, Damian snorted, “Is that Todd’s?”

She nodded, climbing on and adjusting Damian to sit across her lap, his head against her shoulder and one arm wrapped around him, the other by the clutch as she disengaged the kickstand and used a copy Jason didn’t know she had to start up the bike.

She was off then, speeding down allies and side street’s, heading for the entrance for the batcave as quickly as possible.

She asked quietly a few minutes in, “Did Crane get some fear toxin in you?’

Damian shook his head, “Not tonight. He tried, but I had my rebreather ready.”

Calla didn’t like the sound of the ‘not tonight’ comment, but she just squeezed him a little tighter, and let her chin rest against the top of his head, “Good job tonight, kid, I mean it.”

Damian made a sound she couldn’t quite put a name too as they entered the tunnel systems to the cave, and they fell silent.

Well, they were silent until the screaming started.

 

When Damian woke, Calla was sitting at his bedside, one leg pulled up to her chest, scrolling through her phone.

Damian grunted, and struggled to sit up, and glanced at him, gaze assessing, before turning off her phone and shifting to face him, “How are you feeling?”

Damian answered honestly, “Like shit. What happened? I didn’t loose enough blood to warrant passing out.”

Calla hesitated, and Damian resisted the urge to be rude, to snap and snarl as he would with most other members of his family. He liked Calla well enough. She wasn’t very weak, and she didn’t patronise him despite the way that her having raised her siblings made her clearly want to. She wasn’t quite good enough for Grayson, but she and the magician both loved him, and they did right by him and each other, and he could respect that.

She finally shrugged, “Scarecrow managed to dose you with his new fear toxin. A look at the new version and a few security cameras makes us think that he made this one designed to look like a dud, right up until it hits you. It took you 20 minutes before you started to react after I showed up, but we had to sedate you to stop you from tearing open your own throat in the time it took the antidote to start working.”

Damian’s mind raced, but he asked, “Did it affect you?”

Calla nodded, “After I gave my report, thank god.”

Damian looked at her, “What happened?”

She raised a brow, but her expression was gentle, “Neither me or Jay respond well to fear, kid. There’s a reason Crane sedates us rather than dose us.”

Damian nodded, remembering suddenly when he had been reading everyone’s files. Calla and Jason’s responses to fear toxin had been one word, where the others had been a few short sentences. Violent.

She continued, and Damian couldn’t tell if she was just filling him in or reading his face, “Luckily Tim was able to show up and administer the antidote and a sedative before Jason was hit.”

Damian nodded, “That’s good.”

Calla nodded, and after a moment, picked up her phone and started scrolling again.

After a moment, Damian asked, “Did you see what the TMZ website’s had to say?”

Calla glanced up, “About what?”

Damian pursed his lips, and jerked his chin towards the phone.

Calla tapped at it a few times, and her face twisted.

“Seriously, aren’t you too young to be reading this crap?”

Damian grinned at the obvious deflection, and laid back to to feign sleep as Calla read through the article, making little noises of disgust.

After a moment she stood and stalked off with a scoff of ‘brat’ that was just this side of affectionate, and a pause to gently smooth his bangs away from his face. Damian pretended he was already asleep so to not embarrass her.

  
  


Calla snarled as she stalked into the cave, setting her phone on Dick’s desk to avoid shattering it, she paced the length of the cave.

Who the fuck were they to say that shit about her? Sure, they didn’t know who she was, just some nameless brunette spelled to be unidentifiable by Klarion, but still!

Normally, Calla wouldn’t care, normally, she wouldn’t give a shit, she would just continue on, but seriously?! 

They were publishing this bullshit, that had to be illegal! That was some kind of slander, right?

Calla sighed, and she couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t do anything because she’d asked for this and not anticipated it, even though she should have.

Calla climbed onto Jason’s bike, taking off to leave it in his garage and maybe beat the shit out of some criminals to comfort herself.

 

Bruce watched Calla speed off, and shook his head, before sparring a glance at the phone she had left behind. He had an idea. He had an inkling what had gotten her so worked up. But he had been made aware of their plans to make, well, if not their relationship public a relationship, so he hadn’t paid overly much attention to the explosion of Dick’s name in the paper and online media sites.

But if it had gotten Calla this worked up.

Bruce sighed and minimized the camera feed of the medical bay showing his youngest feigning sleep, bringing up article’s from the past two days about Dick with the most hits.

He grimaced at the words that had been splashed across the bat computer monitor. 

He didn’t really like Dick’s choice in partners, but this was distasteful and incredibly insulting to anyone, even people he hadn’t taken into his family, however reluctantly.

Bruce sighed and stood to grab another coffee and check on Damian. This was going to be a long night.

 

The photo showed above the text was an incredibly unflattering shot of Calla, looking creepy, predatory, and a little stupid, one arm around Dick and Klarion as they kissed, plastered close in a way that made it look like she was the one making them kiss each other. The headline bellow read-

**_Puppeteer, Manipulator, or Greedy-Is Richard Grayson-Wayne in need of rescuing?_ **

  
  
  


When Calla got home, Klarion was in the middle of a spell, ingredients spread across their living room floor, and Dick looked murderous, even as he halfheartedly tried to talk Klarion down to non-lethal means of vengeance.

Calla loosened as she shut the door, a bit of the anger clearing from their mind as she came to sit by Klarion’s shoulder.

She leaned into him and kissed his neck, “Can you make it so that anyone who writes anything bad about any of us steps in water whenever they put on clean socks from now on? And that whenever they walk in their houses without shoes they step on a thumbtack? That their light bulbs and batteries run out too soon everytime, and that they can’t find the replacements until they’ve already come back from the store with new ones, no matter how many they have? The hair in their shower drains collects faster after every time they clean it out, they see a spider whenever they start to relax, but it’s always gone by the time they have something to smash it with?”

Klarion relaxed into her, and Dick shot her a grateful look as he ran a hand through her hair.

Klarion nodded, twining their hands together, “I can do that, and so much worse.”

Calla grinned into his neck and Dick laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he.... he.........hehehehuhuhILUslgdliysgfliawgfrliaygrluaywefyaweryghaghhahahahahahahahahahahah........*devolves into hysterical sobs* i just want to go to sleep now please

Dick paused at the door to the apartment, head cocked. Music was playing loudly enough that he could hear it from outside, which, while it happened, wasn’t all that common.

It was Guns n’ Roses, lots of guitar riffs and drums, which meant it was Calla playing it, though he couldn’t say why.

If it had been Nivana, the offspring, Cake, or Amy Winehouse, he'd have known she was thinking of her mom, and more likely than not doing some kind of chore, for example, or if it had been music from her calming playlist, he'd have known she'd had a rough day. Guns n' Roses were still a mood music, as all music was for her, but varied enough that he could only say for sure she was in a good mood.

Slowly, Dick opened the door, and took off his belt and shoes, putting them away in the front hall, and hanging up his jacket, then his keys, before he walked forward.

Calla nor the source of the music was in the living room or the kitchen, and he followed the sound down a short hall to the small room that functioned as their office and art studio.

He poked his head in and found Calla and Klarion making out, Calla perched on a stool, Klarion slotted between her denim-clad thighs, a canvas and palette of paints had been knocked over(thankfully wet side up, Dick knew either of them would get pissy if their art was ruined, no matter for what reason) onto the tarp covering the hardwood flood.

Dick watched silent and still for a moment as Klarion’s fingers tugged at Calla’s hair, her legs hitched wider and more firmly around Klarion’s hips, hands wandering as their bodies pressed and rolled in a frantic pace that seemed to match the tempo of the music.

Calla made a sound somewhere between a growl and a groan as Klarion used her hair to tip her head back, but it quickly morphed into pleased whimpers and heavy breaths as Klarion dipped his lips to her throat kissing and nipping down. Dick smirked. Calla was wonderfully sensitive just about everywhere, but if one of them got their mouths on her neck, shoulders, or chest before she had herself set on getting one of them under her, it made her go soft and boneless.

It was just about the only way to get her submissive and compliant without a game or outright asking her, which while perfectly fine, Dick had found that with Calla and Klarion, it was all some kind of game, and he’d never had anything but glorious, fantastic fun with their games since they’d gotten together, especially with the sex.

His attention was jerked back to the sight before him as Klarion cried out into Calla’s flesh

Calla’s head was dropped back, and her back was arched. One arm wound around Klarion’s neck, the other between them, out of Dick’s sight.

Dick grinned, and in three silent steps, he was against Calla’s back, his hands on her hips. Klarion shot  him a downright wicked smile, and moved his hand out of Calla’s hair, moving down to tug her shirt up.

Dick took the hit, and the instant her shirt was over her hair, Dick had the length of her silky hair wrapped neatly around his fist, and was pulling on it just the way she liked it, his mouth finding the place where her shoulder and neck met and nipping sharply before easing the sting with his tongue.

Calla yelped, hips jerking up, and Klarion growled a little as Calla went to stand to give them better angles. The world twisted, and they were all kneeling on their bed, a few layers gone but none of them entirely naked.

Dick and Klarion shared a devious look, and Calla grinned mischievously, rolling her hips.

Dick  took a moment to bask in this, in this place, this home, these two people, this moment. In how good he had it. In how Calla and Klarion both were never anywhere but where they wanted to be, and how lucky he got to have these two nutjobs as his partners.

Then Calla was twisting to kiss him, and Dick couldn’t think very much anymore

 

Tim had just reached his portion of the city for the night when Calla dropped down beside him near silently and fell into step as he prowled the rooftops and shadows.

They were both silent and watchful as they walked.

It didn’t take long before Calla spoke though, asking just loud enough to be heard over the wind and traffic, “What do you know about Vicki Vale?”

Tim grimace, “That she’s got the personality of a stale chihuahua?”

Calla laughed quietly, and there was a beat of silence before Calla admitted, “Apparently this reporter who’s sank her teeth into ID'ing me and Klarion’s alternate faces, she was a referral from Vale. Her exact phrasing in the email was ‘Once she wants something she doesn’t let go. A bit like a pitbull’.   
Tim blanched, “How bad is this lady if Vale is describing her that way?”

Calla’s lips twisted, “She’s already cornered Dick twice, and tried to pump information about us out of him. She insinuated she’d use blackmail next time.”

Tim hissed, “Jeez.”

Calla nodded, “Just thought I’d give you a heads up that the virus has mutated, and the infection is spreading.”

Tim barked a laugh just as Calla’s phone went off, and when he looked back, she was giving him a wave as she leapt the ledge of the room.

 

Damian frowned, stopping by the doorway to one of the entertainment rooms in the manor at the sound of Calla, Klarion, Brown, and Cassandra’s voices. He peeked inside, and found Cassandra watching the three with laughing eyes, one hand linked with Brown’s her chin balanced on her knees as she watched Stephanie gestures expansively with her other.

Klarion’s attention was on her, and Calla… Calla was staring silently at the wall with the kind of hundred-yard stare that only those who were truly Done could give.

Damian’s head jerked to stare as Drake came up from behind him, and paused when he saw that Damian had stopped, joining him in watching.

“I’m just saying!” Stephanie’s free hand flailed wildly, “That this is so fucking rediculous! This could have all been avoided if you just released a sex tape before hand!”   
All of Damian’s blood somehow managed to rush to his face, and he jerked back. His eyes met Drake’s, and in that moment, they understood each other better than they ever had before. Silently, they shook their heads, and walked away.

 

Bruce had his reason’s for his… dislike of Dick’s partners. Klarion was obvious, Calla…. Well, that was more him holding a grudge than anything.

The first time Calla had interacted with any of the Batclan was not Bruce seeking her out and demanding she didn’t practice vigilantism in Gotham, it wasn’t her running into Jason or Dick on a case, it wasn’t any of the sane, normal(for them) ways they could have run into each other.

It was just before Cala had started hunting her father in earnest, and so, she had recruited the help of a friend, dressed in a loose, black outfit that hid everything but the fact that she was tall and broad, and attacked Bruce.

Perhaps that was an exaggeration, seeing as he knew perfectly well now, after having sparred with her and having watched her fight she hadn’t been trying to do more than distract him, but he didn’t care. Calla had set a small trap, tackled him onto a roof as he had been crossing a block of apartment buildings, and stole a great deal of his gear.

He was ashamed to admit he hadn’t realised until too late, but she had shoved grappling hooks, antidotes, anesthetic gas and smoke bombs into her coat pockets as they had tustled, then she had turned and ran off as gunshots had sounded in the opposite direction, vanishing into the night too quickly for Bruce to follow her in his absolutely dumbfounded and distracted state.

By the time he had realized and went to track his belongings, she’d taken them apart and dumped the trackers into the bay.

He still didn’t know what those explosives had been used for, just that they had been used within a week of her theft. She made a point, to this day, of only using the grappling gun she’d stolen from him whenever they met while in the masks for any reason.

So yeah, Bruce didn’t hate either of them, not really. Klarion at least had been…. Better, kind of, since they’d gotten together. He’d only caused one death, and that had been an accident, even if he still pulled jobs. Calla though, Calla was just a brat. A brat who loved his son and who had, admittedly, wormed her way into his family, but a brat nonetheless.

So yeah, watching the Media pick apart what little information they had on her alter-ego that had been seen with Klarion’s alter ego and Dick several times, come up with theories, devolve into slander, then back to picking at the information… Well, Bruce might have enjoyed that a little too much, especially given that Calla, while indignant and angry, was not genuinely upset about the rumors being spread.

That, that was one of the things about Calla that Bruce approved of, the fact that, as long as it didn’t endanger or hurt her or her loved ones, she didn’t give two fucks what anyone said.

So Bruce watched, and he laughed to himself, and silently mused at how fucking  _ weird  _ his life had turned out when he had the mental space for such trivialites. 

Right now, for instance, he was having a very difficult time restraining laughter as he watched Jason read experts from some trashy magazine or another to Dick in funny voices, dodging his brother’s playful attacks as Calla laughed herself silly on the roof’s ledge.

The article about it all had gone from sharp and barbed, to comical in their logic leaps in the past few weeks, and it had made it all the easier for the three featured in them to laugh it off. If the falsetto’s Jason was using and the over the top, southern-accented cries of ‘Oh how scandalous’ from Calla every now and then were anything to go by, this was an especially juicy one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Calla decides that if one is to wage a war, one needs allies. And weapons.

Klarion and Calla were walking down the street, heading home from the occult shop they’d visited, Calla’s arm draped across Klarion’s shoulders, fingers tracing the length of his colar-bone, just under his shirt. Calla’s hip brushed against his with every step, and the coolness of her skin, the pressure of her arm and her body beside his was a calming, soothing thing, leaving him loose and relaxed.

They were only a few blocks from their apartment, and Calla wondered idly if they’d beat Dick home. She had a little surprise in store for him and Klarion, nothing huge, but she liked seeing the way they both lit up when she came home with something just because she’d thought of them, and there had been these adorable little coffee mugs at walmart the other day. She’d bought a few, one with Nightwings symbol on it, one with a little orange tabby that looked like Teekel on it that she thought might technically be a Halloween decoration, with the holidays so close and where in the store she’d found it, but it didn’t really matter.

Calla’s smile widened at the thought and her arms tightened briefly around Klarion’s shoulder. She had to resist the urge to duck  down and kiss just behind his ear, if only because that would delay them from getting home. There would be plenty of time for that when they got home at any rate.

Klarion’s hand slipped around her, sliding to rest in the back pocket of her jeans, and Calla hid a goofy grin by letting her hair fell into her face. Or at least, they could wait to start necking until they got to the elevators in their building.

Their building had just come into sight, and Calla was just starting to consider what they’d do for dinner when a hand caught her elbow, spinning her away from Klarion,

Calla snarled, yanking her arm away from whoever the fuck had the fucking nerve to touch her without her permission.

Her fingers flexed, and she just barely had the restraint to keep herself from going pale.

It was a man, just a few inches shorter than her, greasy hair sticking out from under a hat and scraggly, unkempt beard. He was leering, and Calla’s lips curled in disgust as she took a step back.

“What?” Calla asked, keeping her tone clipped, impatient, and unimpressed.

She didn’t know this guy, nor did she particularly want to know him. He was keeping her from what was going to be a wonderful night with her boyfriends, unless he had a damned good reason for stopping her she didn’t want to be talking to him

He gave her an obvious up and down look that lingered on her chest under her band-tee and her hips, and asked, “How much?”

Calla’s fingers flexed again, this time as she began to tap into her powers, intending to manipulate the man's body temperature in a tactic she’d devised that simulated that cold churning in ones gut and the flash of goosebumps that occurred when someone was very, very afraid. Generally, that feeling was enough to jumpstart real terror, especially when Calla loomed and glared like she was so good at.

“Excuse me.”

The man fell back a step, but didn’t retreat entirely, “You’re the escort that Wayne brat and his pet fag hired for show, right? How much?”

Calla saw red, and she felt Klarion’s body temperature rise with rage at the words.

She snarled, and darted forward, quick as a cobra, and just as deadly, hitting the man with a right hook to the throat then hooking a foot around his ankle as he staggered back a step and yanking, sweeping him neatly onto his ass, then catching one of his wrists as he fell and yanking him just right so he would land on his belly and yelped as he hit the ground hard.

Calla wound his wrists behind him as the man was still gasping and pinned them with the ball of one foot pressing them down, hard enough that she’d only need to apply a flash of pressure and grind to break both his wrists, but she didn’t.

Instead she leaned in just a bit, not close enough that any part of her but the toe of his boot had to touch him, but close enough to growl out.

“Shut the fuck up. If you call anyone I care about any kind of homophobic slur again, especially my boyfriends, I’l break your god damned wrists.”

The man wheezed, bucking against her hold, and hissed, “Fucking bitch can’t take a-”

Calla cut him off with a slow increase of preasure on his wrists, “Shut your fucking mouth.It’s called polyamory, more specifically, a close, stable triad. Of course, you don’t seem the type who understands healthy relationships between two people, let alone more. I suppose it would be asking too much to try and make you understand anything outside of what's taught in a Tennessee 6th grade health class.”

Calla released him, sneering as she walked back to Klarion, took his arm, and shot a glare over her shoulder at the man as he stood and they hurried down the street to their building.

Calla pretended not to hear the yelled ‘Fucking slut!’ that was called after her before the man bolted, if only so that Klarion would keep walking with her instead of running the man down and murdering him. She'd need to be more subtle than that, because she was done sitting this one out. She was in the game now, and she wouldn't be playing nice.

 

Tim started, bleary eyed and confused. He’d woken to knocking at his front door, the kind of steady, insistant knocking that meant the person had no intention of going away until he answered. He’d expected.. Who even fucking knew, maybe Conner deciding that they hadn’t hung out in too long and that he was gonna drag Tim to breakfast. Or Jason deciding he needed to be a better big brother to Tim-again- and that he should do something. 

Though if he broke into Tim’s coffee stash again to try and ‘help him’ with ‘what was clearly a very unhealthy coping mechinism to help with the inadiquacy complex gained from being neglected by his parents as a child, what don’t give me that fucking look Timmy, I’m as smart as any of the rest of you fuckers’ Tim was going to destroy him, no killing rule or no.

Instead, he’d found Calla, which fair, Calla and he were buds-sorta, he knew she thought of him as a part of her family-, but they both operated under the idea that any time before 7am didn’t exist unless you pulled an all nighter, and Calla looked like she’d slept.

In fact… She looked…. No…. No, she….

Tim’s eyes dropped down from her done up face with her curls perfectly done, passing the dark blue blouse tucked into black slacks and a smooth leather belt to her feet.

Fuck. Well shit, she was wearing the ‘fuck you I’m glorious’ pumps. The one pair heals she owned to his knowledge that didn’t come in the form of some kind of ass-kicking boots. The shoes she wore when she felt the need to give off the vibe of ‘I’m a god damned lady, who is better than any of you fuckers, don’t even try me’. 

Tim closed his eyes and tried to not let the defeat show on his face.

“If you expect me to do anything, I expect you to buy me pancakes first.”

Calla’s voice was positively  _ gleeful _ when she spoke, making Tim shudder in a feeling of pure ‘nope, fuck that, run, you are not equiped to handle this’, “Of course. Now come on, grab your coat.”

Tim ignored his self-preservation instincts, as-per-usual, and shuffled over to the hall closet to pull on some sneakers and one of his coats.

When Calla caught him grimacing at his greasy hair in the hall mirror she rolled her eyes, but beckoned him closer as she opened her purse and riffled through it.

“You look fine Timmers, but here, I’ve got some dry shampoo.”

Tim stepped closer and closed his eyes as she produced the aerosol, finger combing his hair as she sprayed.

When she was apparently done, Calla dumped the dry shampoo back into her purse, and reached behind him, snagging his keys from the dish by the door and flicking the lock before swinging the door shut and taking Tim’s elbow as they started down the steps towards the street where her car was parked, ever the affectionate, tactile older sister, even if she was partly dragging him.

 

Tim slammed his face into the ihop table in hopes that it would wake him up from this nightmare. All he got for his troubles was a sticky forehead. Calla just laughed.

“Calla, this will all die down in it’s own time, you know that right?” Tim asked, not lifting his head as they waited for their food.

There was the soft shuffling of a pen on paper, and a peak up revealed Calla had drawn her leg up to perch her chin on her knee, the heel of her food caught on the edge of her booth as she doodled.

“But what if it doesn’t Tim? It’s been almost two months, and this hasn’t died down.”

Tim made a face into his forearm, that was.. Fair.

“And we both know that that’s in part because they’d been unable to find anything on me or Klarion. If we give them something they’ll probably chill the fuck out.”

Tim made a humming sound of acknowledgement. Calla was smart, very smart. He knew she’d burned her way through the introductory courses to most studies offered in college, and had worked in factories and construction as a teen and young adult long enough that she knew a little about just about everything, simply because she was the kind of person who, if she wanted something and she didn’t think of it as outright theft, Calla was the kind of person who usually got that thing. She was also the kind of person who wanted to know things. 

She was also the kind of person who wanted to be left the hell alone unless she considered you  _ hers. _ Dick and Klarion were hers. Alex and Katie were hers. Jason was hers. Most of the rest of the batfamily she considered hers by proxy of them being Dick’s.

The gross men and bitchy soccer moms and asshat paparazzi who had been hounding all three of them since they’d made the decision to let themselves be outed were very decidedly not Calla’s. He would go so far as to say that if Calla wasn’t with Dick, and if she had even a little bit less morals in her than she did, they might be in big, deadly trouble with her.

It was a little scary to Tim, sometimes, how easily he could see Calla crossing that line and killing someone and not giving a damn.

He sighed into his arm, and lifted his head  to look at Calla, “So what exactly do you want me to give them to find?”

Calla bit her lip, leaning back against her seat back, eyes flicking up, and Tim sat up as the waitress appeared from behind him, setting their plates down.

A quiet exchange about if they were okay, and they both did the sociable thing and lied and said that they were, and Tim pulled his cheesecake pancakes closer.

Calla spoke quietly once the waitress had left, “I don’t want anything to crazy. Just something that will stand up to some scrutiny and for the public to think they know who the man and woman dating the Crown Prince of Gotham are so that they stop digging.”

Tim nodded, cutting into his food, “Okay. I can do that. 

Calla beamed, “Great. I owe you one Timmy.”

Tim rolled his eyes, and stuffed his face, subsequently missing the down right terrifying, calculative gleam in Calla's eyes as she picked up her phone and shot Jason a text.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think next chapter will have Tim and Damian bitching to each other. Almost certainly Tim and Jason will be. Deffinately sassy Alfred

Jason was taking a break in his patrol, smoking on the roof of a building right at the heart of crime alley and waiting for crime to stumble across him when Calla showed up.

She stepped up behind him, mask and jacket on, and leaned over to bump his shoulder as she sat on the ledge of the roof a few inches away.

Jason gave her a side-long look, but didn’t speak in favor of letting out a lungful of smoke into the night air and watching it disperse. He’d gotten several incoherent texts from her over the past 13 hours, one which was only composed of emojis of weapons and smiley faces and question marks in an order he doubts even Bruce would have been able to gather any kind of meaning from, so he’d been expecting her to find him tonight, just not so late.

When she didn’t speak he silently offered it to her. It was a thing between them. Even if you knew the other wasn’t gonna take it, you offered. Plus, he knew for a fact Calla had smoked when she was younger, in her late teens for a hot minute before giving it up. He wouldn’t encourage it, but if she wanted a smoke in light of a stressful few days like Roy sometimes did, even if he had quit for Lian, he wasn’t gonna stop her.

Calla took it.

His brain did a record scratch, freezing on that thought, hand still frozen mid air as Calla pursed painted red lips around the filter and sucked in a lungful of smoke. She held it for a moment, then exhaled as she handed the cigarette back.

“Thanks,” She sighed, leaning back on a palm as Jason dumbly lifted the cigarette to his own lips and took a drag.

He said on the exhale, watching the smoke dance as he spoke, “So what’s got you so worked up?”

Calla sighed and took the cigarette when he offered it again, “Tim’s whipping up a background for me and Klarion to hopefully make this whole media frenzy die down. We expected some backlash, but we didn’t think it would explode like this.”

Jason rolled his eyes, “ ‘S just stupid that you went about it the way you did at all. I knew you three were stupid for each other, and this just proves it. None of you would’ve been this fuckin’ dumb over this sort of thing if it didn’t involve the other two.”

Calla grimace at the idea that her love for them was a weakness in anyway, because it had never been. She had always thought them her biggest strength, but he was right, so she just nodded, silently agreeing.

Jason bumped her shoulder with his own, “So, what do you need from me?”

Calla gave him a look, crinkled eyes and jackal grin, and took the last few puffs of the cigarette when Jason offered it before putting it out on the ledge, “You know, I think that’s why we get along Jason, we’re both cynical mother fuckers.”

Jason barked a laugh, “I’m cynical. You’re just warped and bitter.”

Calla grinned wider and more feral, “I need you to start kicking up a fuss on the streets. Cause a little mayhem, a little panic. Take some of the heat off us for a minute.”

Jason raised a brow, “They can put heat on both of us, you know that.”

Calla smirked, “Yeah, but you won’t be the only one gaining attention. Don’t stress about it, just get yourself splashed across a few newspapers for shooting out some corrupt someone or others knee caps, that’s all I ask. I know you’ve been saving one of the recently promoted detectives for a rainy day.”

Jason stood, then helped Calla to her feet, “Sure. What the hell, why not.”

She hip checked him as she walked back across the rooftop, “You’re a lifesaver, Red!”

She chuckled and added as she shot her grapple, “And you’ve got some lipstick on your mouth, by the way.”

Jason swiped at his mouth with the hand he’d taken the glove off of, and it came away tinted the color of Calla’s lipstick from the shared smoke.

He laughed and started off the find trouble since for once it wasn’t finding him first.

 

Calla was silent as mist as she crept up behind Dick where he stood on the edge of the roof, watching Gotham. He still knew she was there, somehow. Right when she was about to plaster herself against his back and drape her arms and head over his shoulders like a human shield, protecting him, always, he whirled, catching her by the waist and dipping her so low she felt her hair puddle on the concrete.

He grinned and she giggled and he kissed the corner of her mouth before standing, spinning her like a dance back into his arms, warm and wrapped around her, tight and secure and safe. She sighed and relaxed back into him.

“What gave me away?” She asked into the cold of the night.

He leaned in to kiss the back of her head and bury his nose in her hair, but it barely muffled his words.

“Wind was blowing just right for me to catch a whiff of your perfume and smoke.”

Calla raised her brow, and Dick huffed a laugh despite not being able to see it, “And I caught a glimpse of your shadow.”

There was a beat of silence, before Dick asked, “You good? You don’t normally smoke.”

She shrugged, “Just wasn’t expecting it to blow up like this. Went to pull a few favors. It’s my mess, so I’ll clean it up.”

Dick made a sound between a sigh and a growl, and pressed closer to her, “Don’t even start. Am I stupid? Is Klarion?”

Calla shuddered, “No, but-”

Dick laced their fingers and squeezed her hand, “But nothing. Both of us wanted the same thing. None of us thought it through as well as we should have, but it’s done and we’re handling it. Don’t blame yourself, not unless you’ll blame us too.”

Calla’s face crumpled in a complicated way she was glad he couldn’t see.

“I’m incapable of blaming you or Klarion for anything. Maybe holding you responsible on a good self control day, but never blaming.”

Dick laughed as little, “We know. I’m not much better, and we both know Klarion is barely capable of that.”

Calla chuckled, and they disentangled to kiss.

Dick pulled back and leaned in to kiss under her ear, “I’ll head home and get everything ready if you do two more sweeps of our patrol route.”

Calla shivered and brought him into a quick, bruising kiss, “Sounds like a plan.”

Then she was off, swinging through the streets in a quick back and forth of motion that would give him around thirty minutes before she got home.

 

When Calla got home, slipping through a window and closing it and the curtains behind her, the apartment was dark save for the TV and lamp in the living room, the heat was turned up high enough she could feel it warming her.

Entering the living room, she found Dick relaxing, sprawled on the couch, with Klarion laid atop him, face buried in his throat, belly to belly and chest to chest. Protecting each other’s vulnerable spots and claiming them at once.

The TV was playing through the opening credits to Stardust, and three huge mugs of tea steamed next to a plate of oreo’s next to a short and fat glass of milk.

Calla stripped down, out of her mask and jacket and shirt and pants and bra.

She grabbed one of the woven blankets that was draped across one of the overstuffed armchairs she couldn’t remember how they’d gotten and rounded the couch. Klarion glanced and smirked at the sight of her in her panties, despite that they were wearing anything more, and shifted to let Calla climb up and shove herself in, half between Dick’s side and the side of the couch and half stop him before Klarion squirmed back in close, against Calla’s side and under her arm and letting her drape them in the blanket before gathering their mugs.

Klarion tilted Dick’s mug, the one with the nightwing logo on it to let him sip what she now realized was cocoa, then sipped his own from the mug with the teekel cat on it, then gave Calla sips of her own tea, mint, from a mug with a snowflake emblazoned across it.

Calla felt something in her chest loosen as Dick pressed a button and the recliner portion of the end of the couch came out, and Klarion transferred the drinks and cookies into easier reach.

So she snuggled in closer, felt Klarion nuzzle into them both and Dick’s arms squeeze them gently from time to time, and she held them both close to her, basked in the warmth of home, and dozed.

Everything might be spiraling. But it was worth it. If she got to keep Dick and Klarion, it was so, so worth it. They were worth anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck I'm tired


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot happened. Sorta. How did plot happen?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter, mostly written in the span of like 3 hours because im masochistic, apparently
> 
> Also the tense's might be a little off? I have a bad habit of switching back and forth with those but I'm trying to fix that.

Calla was looking over Tim’s shoulder as he typed on his computer in the batcave, both of them growing at the article he brought up.

Calla’s fingers itched to find Dick’s or trace Klarion’s collar bones, but she couldn’t. Dick had gone to confront Bane when they got word of a deal going down by the docks, and Klarion had gone after him twenty minutes after a missed check in, and both Bab’s and Tim had been unable to track him. That had been hours ago, and Calla had just finished ripping apart some of Scarecrows bases and leaving his men barely breathing on the steps of the nearest Gotham hospital as a reminder why he shouldn’t mess with their youngest.

She’d come straight to the cave when she’d gotten the call, her blood, already frozen in her veins had seemed to stop moving.

She scowled, “Do we know anything? When did the recording of Dick’s mask cut out?”

TIm switched tabs and began typing more quickly, bringing up the recordings of Dick’s mask, back five minutes from when it cut out to see his view as he created a set of buildings that overlooked the bay and sent himself flying over the edge, gliding down towards the warehouse with the familiar snapping sound of thin fabric unfolding between his legs and between his arms and torso.

He landed easily and lightly on the rooftop and the camera jolted just a little as he pressed his fingers to the edge of his mask. The camera changed, heat signatures lighting up through the old, half-rotten roof he stood on. A dozen or so were clustered together into two groups, none large enough to be Bane.

Dick hummed, turned to scan his surroundings. Nothing until he scanned the roof itself, and Bane, huge and red with heat stepped into view.

He was smiling wide, and rumbled in his deep, accented voice, “Ah, I was expecting the bat, Nightwing. But you are just as good, I think.”

Dick gave a chuckled, “Thanks! It’s good to be appreciated!”

Calla shuddered, her face twitched complicatedly. She liked fighting Bane when the stakes weren’t big, world ending things. He was smart, and a good fighter, and generally didn’t try to unmask or kill her or her boys unless there was something bigger behind it.

Bane laughed and shook his shoulders out, cracked his neck and knuckles as Dick drew his escrima sticks and took a fighting stance.

Bane lunged and Dick ducked, they fought, blows ducked, blocked and taken. Dick got him in the temple with a fancy flip-kick that everyone always saw coming but no one could ever dodge, Bane delivered a series of swift punches to the ribs that had Dick panting and back-flipping away.

Then, there was a scream behind him, and Dick whirled to look. And the feed cut out halfway around.

Calla snarled, and shoved to her feet.

She paced across the cave to the wall of weapons as Tim followed.

She generally didn’t carry many weapons beyond the dagger in her boot, the taser at her hip, and the collapsible bow staff strapped to her forearm. Her powers and her fighting abilities ensured that she rarely needed more.

But whatever this was, it had taken both her boys. And she’d be getting them back.

She stole a spare belt and fitted it around her waist, shrugging off her coat and stuffing a handful of wing-dings into a compartment, sharpened, dulled, smoke bomb, anesthetic, explosive, ultra-sonic. A whip, a few tasers of varying voltage. She had a few daggers at home she’d stop to get. She’d borrowed a gun from Jason, something small just in case. A spare grappling hook. A pouch of tracker chips, a rebreather, a gas mask.

Spare lock picks hidden away in the arm guards she slipped on. Tim slipped closed and handed her a small pill and a small, sticky tracker.

She tucked the tracker against the underwire of her bra, pressed it there before taking the pill, another tracker she knew and swallowing it dry.

She smiled at him, “Thanks Tim. Can you text Jason and let him know I’ll be swinging by for some equipment in twenty?”

TIm nodded and put a hand on her shoulder, “Be careful and take Jason with you.”

She paused, then nodded, and snagged a small device off the wall too.

She held it up to him, “I’ll press the button once every thirty minutes. If I don’t, call in the big guns.”

She slipped it under the hem of her glove, just above her wrist, and used a safety pin to secure it.

Tim nodded, and ran over to grab a scanner that would sync his computer and Bab’s to all of the tech she’d taken.

A quick scan and she was off, stealing Dick’s bike from where she left it and speeding off.

 

She and Jason were little more than shadows as they crossed the docks, ducking under piers and skulking from post to post and shrub to shrub, less than suggestions of figures and movements as they approached the place where Bane’s boat was docked. It had taken them less than 10 minutes to break the men who had still been at the warehouse, not when Calla had used one man as an example, left him shivering, gibbering mess in need of a prosthetic and after Jason had taken out his knife and asked which fingers he would like to have lopped off first.

He’d held out still, but when Calla had missed her hands and mused about the temperatures at which certain liquids in the body froze, and how long they had to stay that way before they were no longer viable to be saved. About the amount of force needed to remove parts of the body.

About how if he didn’t tell her where Nightwing and Klarion were right this instant she would put into practice everything she had just said and more onto him.

And he’d begged and spilled and they’d left him alive. No deaths, not yet. Bruce would still be angry, Dick might be disappointed, but they weren’t dead and there were paramedics on the way after they’d gone. It was good enough.

Jason caught Calla’s elbow, and they froze under the dock they were under, listening.

The rumbling voice wasn’t loud enough to hear what was being said, but it was unmistakable.

Another voice responded, lower and smoother, but still male. Then another, and Calla couldn’t be sure if it was a man or woman.

Calla and Jason exchanged a look, then hand signs and vanished.

Calla listened as she drew closer to the voices, and her stomach churned. They were negotiating price. For Klarion and Nightwing. 

She stepped lighting on the boat, listening and watching as she approached the closed off room the voices came from.

She peered in a small, high window, and her heart stopped.

There were six poles in the room, protruding from the hardwood floor. Four were occupied.

A pretty young woman in nice clothes, Nightwing, Klarion, and a man whose face she couldn’t see through his shaggy hair. All unconscious, all with their hands tied to the poles above their heads and their feet tied to the poles just barely above the ground.

A semi-circle of people with their backs to her were bickering about the prices with Bane.

She took a deep breath and slipped up, onto the roof, measured her line, and flipped off the roof, pointing her toes and sucking herself in tight as she can to squeeze through the tiny window and skidding to a stop in a crouch.

She stood, eyes cold and blue and the temperature in the room dropped so far and fast that it’s all she could do to remember to keep a small bubble of warmth around the civvies and her boys.

The door was frozen shut and the floor iced over before anyone could move.

Calla was furious and angry and she wanted to kill them, every last one so they remember for next time that as much as this city belongs to Batman, it and everyone in it also belonged to Permafrost, and she will not permit human trafficking in it lightly. So they remember that there are few kills on her record by all of them were human traffickers and abusers.

She moved when one of them went for a gun, using her powers only to chill them and give herself and only herself traction on the ice.

Rather, she lunged, delivering the kind of kick that breaks down doors to his knee and watching it explode backwards as she caught his wrist and used her other hand to break his elbow and forearm, throwing the gun out the window she came in and distantly registering the splash of it into the bay.

Then she turned, ducked under a slash with a knife and caught the woman’s shoulder, pressing and digging with all the force she had, shattering the joint and dislocating her shoulder, then pulling her in to bite her throat until she could taste the spill blood, and sucking in her heat until she dropped, shivering and glassy-eyed.

She hated doing that, hated being like Killer Frost, but she did create her, and right now Calla was to furious to care.

She turned, flicked out her bow staff, and kicked another  man in the ribs, forcing him onto his back and taking the pole in both hands and slamming it down, breaking his nose, then swinging it into his temple while he was stunned with the pain, knocking him unconscious.

She flipped backwards, one of the moves Dick taught her, just in time to avoid bullets. One of them hit the man she had been standing over and another hit the woman but she didn’t care, it wasn’t her job to keep people who thought owning other people was okay alive and if they were stupid enough to hit their allies that wasn’t her problem.

One did graze her thigh, and that was a bit of a problem.

She powered through it, though it slowed her down, throwing herself past the man that had shot at her to meet Bane, ducking his punch and catching him around his throat and slamming him to the floor. With him sober from his venom they were similarly built, tal, broad, strong, and she was fuming and angry right now.

She put both hands around his throat and pinned his arms with her knees as she squeezed as hard as she could.

He thrashed and grunted and wheezed, but Calla was relentless, she rode out his struggles easily, but without his super strength he couldn’t escape her, especially not with her ice creeping over him to hold him down and her cold robbing his of his strength and making him shiver and shudder.

She grinned when she heard another window shatter and felt Jason’s heat signature enter through another window. She gave him purchase, little dots of roughness as he sprinted across the room and shot the gun out of the hands of the man who was aiming at her back.

His gun went off, and she felt pain flare in her side, but she ignored it as Killer Frost had taught her too.

She squeezed tighter and gritted out to Bane as his breathing slowed and his eyes flutter, “Don’t try human trafficking again in Gotham, Bane. You only get one warning.”

She can’t let them know that Nightwing and Klarion both are hers. She, they, learned that years ago. Family, friends know of course, but two openly poly relationships in Gotham with two men and a woman? One of which includes a magic user who could disguise them all?

Well, it’s just obvious enough that none of them are willing to let anyone who doesn’t already know their identities know, even if most people might not put the pieces together.

She held it for a few moments until after she knew Bane was unconscious, then stood.

She turned to find that everyone in the room who isn’t a civilian or hers had been handled, and Jason was pulling smelling salts out of somewhere to wake them.

They came too quickly, and Jason passed them to Calla, and she waved them under Dick’s nose, then Klarions.

Neither stirred.

“Shit,” She hissed, “They were probably drugged. Untie them and then help me get them out of here. We’ll call the cops when we’re ready to leave with them.”

Jason nodded, and cut down the woman and man, directing them down the docks and watching them both run.

Calla sighed, “Okay, I’ll take Dick, you take Klarion.”

Jason nodded, took Klarion in a fireman’s carry while Calla heaved Dick up bridal style.

  
  


When they got to the cave, Bruce was hovering-as much as Bruce ever hovered- by the vehicle entrance to the cave.

He took Dick from Calla without a word, and started towards the med bay with only the barest glance to check that Jason was following with Klarion and Calla was with them.

Alfred and Lesely were both in the med bay when they reached it.

Bruce set Dick down, then watched as Klarion was set down on a gurney beside him.

“Why wasn’t I informed that they’d been taken?” Bruce asked, voice deep but not Batman Deep.

Tim said from where he had popped up in the doorway, “By the time we knew Calla was already in the cave and preparing to go to war against Bane and whoever else got in her way, and Jason went with her. You were at Damian’s choir concert and had asked to not be interrupted unless there was an emergency. We deemed that until such a time as Calla or Jason or both went missing that it was not dire enough to interrupt you or Damian.”

Bruce made a low warning sound in his throat.

Calla said in a quiet, deadly voice, “It’s over, we got them and the civilians involved out. The more important thing is to determine what was used drug Klarion and Dick and if Bane’s involvment in human trafficking was a one-time opprotunistic deal or if he is expanding what he’s trafficking.”

Bruce pursed his lips and glared at Calla for a moment before nodding, “Yes.”

They glanced to where Alfred was examining Klarion’s vitals and Lesely was examining Dick’s.

Alfred said without looking up, “I would be able to do so much more quickly if you stopped hovering.”

Calla slunk back to stand by the door, and everyone else left.

Alfred said softly as he finished checking Klarion’s pupils and took his pulse, “I know Master Bruce won’t say so, but we are all very grateful that you acted so quickly and effectively in retrieving them both. Were there any casualties?”

Calla considered, “A few people may need physical therapy and prosthetics, but neither Jason or I killed anyone. They might have shot at each other in the confusion though.”

Calla thinks if Alfred’s face wasn’t so mild, the expression on his face might have been vicious glee.

“What a shame.”

Calla shrugged, “It would seem intelligence is a rare commodity with goons these days.”

Alfred's lips twitched, “Indeed, miss.”

Calla straightened and left to find something that might soothe her rage.

 

Damain found her meditating in a hidden little nook in the cave.

He sat across from her silently, and met her eyes when she opened them.

He looked so much like Bruce is spooked her sometimes. She blinked at him, silently waited.

He fidgeted, drummed his fingers on his knee and glanced away to watch the movements of the cave that the spot provided.

“Father won’t let me see th-Grayson yet. Is he badly injured?”

Calla’s face remained smooth and she resisted the urge to give him a gentle smile and hug him the way she would with one of her younger siblings.

“His ribs might’ve been cracked, he was a little bruised, and he had a small cut on his temple. Nothing broken. He was likely drugged, but he wasn’t unmasked.”

Damian nodded, eyes locked on the doors to the med bay.

“And the magician?”

Calla had to fight very hard not to grin, “About the same, though he was likely drugged very quickly after going after him, he wasn’t hurt as badly.”

Damian nodded once.

Calla’s eyes flicked from him, to the doors, to him again.

“This would have worked out the same no matter where you and Bruce had been tonight, you realize that, right Damian?”

Damian looked to her, “No. We’d have found them more quickly if we were here.”

Calla cocked her head, and met his eyes, “Where are you and Bruce normally in your patrol around an hour ago?”

Damian answered quickly, “Warehouse block 18.”

Calla nodded, “The furthest from the bay. I was just coming into the cave when Klarion missed his check in time, and me and Jason found them in less than 45 minutes. It would have taken you both that much time to even be on the streets again looking for leads after returning to the cave to be briefed. And even if that hadn’t happened, if we interrupted them while they were fighting or transporting them, it could have gone very badly, you know they might have tried to hurt them to get away.”

Damian pursed his lips, and his eyes flicked, before giving an unconvinced nod.

Calla’s eyes narrowed, “Damian.”

He looked to her, and she raised a brow, “Have I ever lied to you to make you feel better?”   
He shook his head.

She nodded, “So what are you acting as if I would now?”

Damian relaxed a little, “Thank you.”

She nodded and stood, “I’ll let you know when they’re ready to be seen.”

Calla walked off.

 

Jason watched as Calla stood at Dick’s work station in the cave, eyes as soft as they ever got as she stared at the picture of Klarion kissing Dick’s cheek from his back and Calla’s fist wrapped in his tie as she kissed his other cheek from the front.

Dick’s nose was wrinkled up and his eyes were squinted with the force of his grin, crows feet and laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. Calla’s ever-red lips were curled into a smirk, like she knew something the rest of the world didn’t. Klarion just looked content. Like he was exactly where he wanted to be and to be anywhere else wasn’t a concern on his mind.

It was a good picture. They all looked happy and carefree in a way they only ever were together.

Calla picked up the frame, a small smile curling her lips, and she relaxed for the first time that night.

Jason turned away, walking over to Tim’s desk and perching on the edge, blocking his view of the screen he was working at.

Tim glanced up at him, unimpressed, “Jason.”

Jason smirked, “Replacement.”

It had none of the bite to it that it had once had, especially considering he wasn’t even Robin anymore. Now it was just a nickname, a way to tease him and Tim knew it. It was a little nice to not have a family member with whom poking at tender spots wasn’t a past time.

“What do you want?”

Jason put a hand to his chest, “Why I’m hurt! You act like you only see me when I want something.”

Tim sighed, “And when you want to annoy someone. I was being optimistic.”

Jason barked a laugh, “You figure out what they used to knock Dickie bird and Klare-bear out yet?”

Tim sighed again and nudged him aside to bring up a tab on his screen, and gestured to it in a ‘help yourself’ sort of way.

Jason scanned the page, eyes flickering. It was a common sedative, and not one that Dick had any kind of allergy too, or Klarion that they knew of. It would wear off after another few hours and didn’t have too many worrisome side effects.

Jason nodded, “Okay, good. Good good good.”

Tim’s lips quirk in smile that bordered on a smirk, “You know, you’re really bad at pretending you hate the lot of us. I don’t know how we believed it for so long.”

Jason grumbled, “Because I do. I just like Calla and she’d be upset if they weren’t okay.”

Tim laughed, “No, you  _ looooove _ us.”

Jason stood up off the desk, “Let’s go, right now, me and you, I’ll show you how much I love you with my fucking gun.”

Damian’s voice drawled from a few feet away, “God, please, do that. Put that poor, hysterical creature out of its misery.”   
Tim rolled his eyes, “I’m the miserable one? Me? I’m not the one suffering through his first year of high school.”

Damian paused, then nodded, “Point. But I’m smarter than most of my teachers, so it hardly matters.”

Jason snorted, “God, maybe I’ll shoot both of you and put you out of your misery.”

Tim sighed, “Stop teasing me with the sweet release of death, if you’re gonna shoot me just do it Jason.”

Jason hesitated for a moment, “Now that you're asking for it, it feels weird, Damian, does it feel weird now?”

Damian nodded, “Drake, you make everything weird.”

Tim sighed and turned back to his computer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so war is waged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't remember or really care if i mentioned what Calla did in any of the other installments, but here I've decided she runs a small boutique-shop-thing that specializes in custom peices, high-end clothing for plus sized women, women who don't have dimensions catered too by most brands, clothes that cater to people with disabilities that make finding clothing difficult, and alterations. And she may or may not do all of it with the most affordable prices she can manage without going out of business and employing around two dozen various employee's including like 3 designers, a dozen seamstresses, 6 or 7 retail workers and like 3 people to handle the running of the two locations.  
> Also she totally lied to the reporter. Calla totally has all the social media accounts. Lynn, doesn't however. And Calla's excuse for refusing to name her business(and revealing the fact that one Calla Dixon owns it rather than a Lynn Hanover) is that she refuses to risk even accidentally using Dick and his whole thing to advertise her business. Tim was however to make it look like Lynn Hanover has been Calla's assistant in running the business since the beginning and is on the lease with Dick for years now because he's Awesome.

Calla was in line at a coffee shop too far from any of her normal haunts to be practical, and with the kind of over-priced coffee she hated, but it was unusually quiet for the time of day, and she had to admit their scones were decent. She wouldn’t normally come here at all except that she was playing coy, but really, she needed to get some kind of damage control interview out without initiating and one of the reporters who had sunk his teeth into this mess came here every day in about thirty minutes like clock work.

He always scanned the small, quiet shop as he waited for his drink, and he had a good reputation for fairness in the city, and his articles about her and her boys had been some of the least nasty.

So Calla intended to get herself a few scones and a coffee and sit down to do some work while she waited. He’d recognize her with the way he had been following all this, and if her impression of him was right, he’d almost certainly approach and ask for an interview.

She’d prefer to approach him, to talk and snark and be the bulldozer she knew she was. But she knew the best way to divert this, all of this, was to make them think she wasn’t what she was.

So she was going to play this shy and kind and disney-princess-esque even if it made her mouth a little sour.

She was going through the receipts and financials from her business for the past months, checking for errors and reading through the reveiws, requests, and suggestions that could be left after orders were filled, noting themes and ideas.

She’d been working for just over thirty minutes and the reporter had entered the shop just 7 minutes prior, when she felt him approaching.

She didn’t turn, didn’t speak as he took a deep breath and entered her sightline, turning to stand beside her table.

She glanced up after 4 seconds and gave him a polite smile, “Can I help you?”

Her voice was pitched a bit higher, a bit more sweetly than her natural voice, and the man beamed at her offering a hand.

“Hi, my name is Paul Heinonen.”

Calla gave a smile that was bright and just a little confused, “Oh, um, nice to meet you! Lynn Hanover.”

Calla held out a hand warmed by coffee to shake. Her palm might feel a bit chilly, but it could be explained away as poor circulation. No reason to suspect a meta here. Nope. Not at all.

He shook her hand firmly and quickly.

“Mind if I sit?”

She blinked, “May I ask why?”

He nodded, shuffling his coffee between his hands, “Oh! I’m a reporter, I was hoping to ask you a few questions, perhaps set up and interview with you and your partners?”

She jolted, eyes flying wide, and nodded, shutting her computer and shoving it into her computer bag.

Her fingers drummed the table in a nervous rhythm, eyes as big and wide and doe-like as she could make them, “What would you like to ask about?”

He offered her a kind smile, soothing, “Nothing to personal, but if I could publish something, anything, then I might be able to get some of the media frenzy off of you.”

Calla blinked her eyes, and nodded, “That would be great, if you could.”

He nodded, fished a small recorder out of his bag, “Would you mind?”

Calla waved him on, “Not at all!”

He set it between them, pressed the record button, “So, Ms. Hanover, you’ve been extremely difficult to find information on. Generally it takes a few days, maybe a week or so to find a name and it spirals from there. Would you say there’s a reason that you haven’t given us a name until now?”

Calla shrugged, and glanced away, “I don’t know. I’ve always lived a quiet life and I’m not really on any social media platforms. My family is small and close, there wouldn’t be much to find I suppose.”

Paul hummed, “Okay, how did you meet Richard, and I’m afraid I don’t know who your other partner is?”

Calla blinked, “Um, Cole. I won’t give his last name, but I could bring him along if you’d like to meet him at some point.”

Paul latched onto that, “Of course! Yes, how did you meet them?”

Calla traced the grain on the wood with a finger, reciting their story mentally, and said, “Dick came into my shop to buy something for his sisters birthday. he was a flirt the whole time and he came back a few days after to ask me out. I said yes and we dated for a few months on and off before we met Cole through a friend of his. It took a few weeks after to get us all at the same place at the same time but we just… clicked. Me and Dick didn’t work right without Cole, and it’s the same for me and Cole when Dick has to be away for business for more than a few days, and they say it’s the same when I have to leave for the same. We all click, but the whole puzzle doesn’t come together without all three of us.”

Paul looked like he wanted to coo.

“That’s so sweet. What do you and Cole do for a living?”

Calla gestured to her bag vaguely, “Business. I'm involved in clothing fittings, alterations, custom pieces, that sort of thing.”

Calla bit her lip and looked up at Paul through her lashes, twitched her lips in amusement. Klarion had hated this, said it mocked and reduced his status and the last bit and what it implied was completely misleading, but he had agreed to the lie without as much of a fuss as he’d have given if he’d really hated it.

“Cole works as a mystical consultant. Ritual’s, seance’s, and cleansing.”

Paul’s brow quirked, but he nodded, “Oh-kay…”

She watched him visibly try to gather himself and hid her smirk and bitter-smug-vicious amusement behind innocent humor and guileless eyes.

Paul gathered himself, “What made you decide you could love two men?”

Calla’s face fell a little and she didn’t project it, but she let disappointment flash before she began shuttering her expression, silently expressing that he was loosing her with the phrasing.

“Because I fell in love with both of them and they both loved me and each other.”

He scrambled to recover the ground he’d lost, “What are your favorite traits about them?”

Calla kept her expression closed off, but relaxed the slope of her shoulders and the set of her brow, “Dick…. He laughs so easily. He’s so funny and happy and carefree. I love how he can see the good in almost anything. And Cole…. I love that Cole is a little wild. He’s fierce, and he’s wild and he would do anything to make us feel free, but I, we, always feel safe with him.”

Paul flashed her a smile, “He’s the protector out of all of you?”

Calla nodded, letting the pure, burning, sweeping love she felt show on her face, in her eyes, “Absolutely.”

Paul nodded, “Was going public with your relationship a decision, or was that an accident?”

Calla bit her lip, “A little of both. We wanted to come out with it at some point, and we weren’t hiding the way we had been for the past two years, but we weren’t quite ready when it happened.”   
He blinked, “Two years?”

Calla nodded, “Three in a few months. You can see why we got tired of hiding.”

Calla glanced at her watch and made a face.

“I need to be going soon, and I have things to finish up, is there anything else?”

Paul fished out a business card and scribbled a phone number on the back as he spoke, “Yes, but for now is there anything that you’d like to say to the world at large regarding your relationship and the reaction to it?”

Calla nodded, “Yes, in fact, there is.”

She cleared her throat, leaned a little closer to the recorder, and spoke clearly, “Me and my partners are three consenting adults who love each other. We do not engage in lewd acts in public, and I am disgusted and ashamed to be a part of the same species as the people who had made some of the posts I’ve been shown regarding it. Perhaps they should consider what makes them so eager to get so worked up over a relationship that does not involve them nor wishes too instead of spending so much time spreading mysoginistic, homophobic, and cruel rumors and sterotypes.”

Calla stood, shouldered her computer bag, and gathered her coffee, “We’ll call you about that interview.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also Please Validate Me


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More plot! Next chapter, social media strikes back and Calla begins to see the fruit of her labors

When Calla got home from the inpromptu-planned interveiw she was in a bad fucking mood. She hated having to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, someone big-eyed and sweet. She was good at it, but she hated it.  
So she took a shower, scrubbed the stink of the over-sweet perfume and bath products she used for these kinds of roles from her skin, and washed with her regular things twice. She stepped from the shower, dried off, and rubbed her regular mint-honey-aloe-vera lotion into her skin. Her own perfume, honeysuckle and the smell of the woods, the wild. Her own makeup, understated save for the black of her lashes and eye-liner and the blood of her lips, so unlike the pale lips and brown lashes she’d had earlier.  
She dumped Lynn’s clothes in a basket and dressed in black jeans and heavy, sturdy cotton that hid her throat and hooked over her thumbs, black on black. Her grapple at her hip, her dagger in her boot, and her mask on her face and she was flying from her window.  
She didn’t bother with her coat, didn’t bother with the tazer that rested in its pocket no matter the face she wore or name she answered too.  
She flew, and she fought.  
For tonight she was not Lynn. Not quite Permafrost. Not any of the other names she had taken over the years. Not even Calla, not really. Not quite the baby girl her mother had held close and named for a mourning flower because she had to have known even then that people around her would suffer and die, and that Calla would die too, too many times to count, and be reborn stronger and more twisted each time.  
She was violence, and blood. That was all. That was all she was and she wondered when Dick would finally realize it, when Klarion would. When they’d leave, because they would surely, she wasn’t what they thought she was, she still didn’t understand how they didn’t see that and was far too selfish to correct them. But tonight she didn’t even bother to hide it.  
She thought she’d be the same if either of them ever died. A raw wound, bleeding, infecting. Nothing more  
Calla landed on the roof of a building on the outskirts of the Suicide Slums silent, burning inside, pissed off, and ready to fight anything that moved.  
As always, Gotham provided.  
Not a block away there were heat signatures, three men and a woman and the woman’s yelled screams for help couldn’t be missed.  
Calla landed on the man pawing at the woman’s pants and laughing and rode him into the ground, teeth bared and slashing her fingers across his face. She was barely colder than it took for her hair to go white, isn't using her powers at all as his flesh opened under her nails and his nose gave under her fist and some of his ribs submitted to her boots as she backflipped off of him to go after the other two men.  
One had a knife, and she barely managed to jump back enough to dodge, then she caught her forearm under his at the bottom of the arch. She twisted her arm around his, caught his bicep, and twisted, putting all her weight behind shoving down and back.  
His shoulder came out with a wet ‘pop, and he screamed as he dropped the knife.  
She darted in, kept her grip on his bicep, and punched out. His face, his throat, again and again.  
The only thing that snapped her out of it were the footsteps of the final man trying to escape, and she turned, ran him down, and had him on his belly under her before he made it three steps after her last blow to his cohort.  
His wrists came behind his back, pinned under her boot, and the image of the man who’d stopped her and Klarion in the street flashed before her eyes.  
The man screamed as both his wrists broke, nearly shattered under her foot, then again as she took his hair and slammed his face into the ground. She was lifting it again, ready to shove him back down, to slam his face until he was one with the pavement, until he was dead, when a hand touched her elbow, feather light and gone in an instant.  
She whirled, on her feet before a heartbeat has passed.  
And she was staring down at the woman she’d-The woman the men had been holding down.  
She looked strong, built like Calla, solid, if a little more wiry, a little shorter. Her hair was shaved into a buzz cut, eyes dark and understanding.  
Calla noted the knife a few feet away that had been there when she’d arrived. The empty sheath in the women's boot.  
Calla swallowed, and the part of her that was baying for blood stilled and quieted as the hissed whispers of doubt that had hounded her since early that night silenced.  
The woman smiled, scooped up her knife, and hooked her arm in Calla’s elbow. Calla walked her home in silence, watched her go in, and turned, went for the nearest roof.   
She hadn’t had an anxiety attack like that in years. Not since the last time Scarecrow had been stupid enough to dose her with fear toxin, and without that kind of catalyst it had been even longer. The last time was just after Dinah had begun training her, and then she’d found her balance, her center in life and in herself, and the worst of it had eased and eased and eased. The worst she got now was tight chested, when before she’d have needed to fight or kill something or sit still and quiet in a dark room until she recovered.  
She needed to talk to someone.

Alfred frowned at her, squinted, frowned some more.  
He hummed, “You are under an extreme amount of stress, miss. It would not be unthinkable for you to regress a bit due to that.”  
Calla shook her head, “No, that’s not it. I know what’s normal for me when I’m under stress and that’s not it Alfred, I swear.”  
Alfred nodded, “Then I’ll keep an eye out for anything similar.”  
Calla nodded, offered a grateful smile, “Thank you Alfred. This is why you’re my favorite.”  
Alfred gave her a wry smile, “A fact that I’m sure break’s Master Bruce’s heart.”

Dick leaned into Calla’s side and resisted the urge to sneeze the too-sweet perfume she wore as Lynn inspired in him. She was under his arm, and she felt the chill of her increase when someone yelled something he didn’t quite catch over the din, but she clearly did.

Jason raised his brows, unimpressed, “Calla, you realize that uncontrollable rage, the need to do violence, and waves of self-hatred are my major personality traits, right?”  
Calla’s lips twisted, “And yet, you’re not an idiot.”  
Jason looked unconvinced.  
Calla smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand, “Spill, asshole.”  
Something in Jason’s face fractured, and he sighed, leaning into her side just a little.  
“I have noticed something like that. Sometimes. But I can’t find a pattern.”  
Calla nodded slowly, then, “Text me all the places, times, dates, and days of the weeks as specifically as you could remember them?”  
Jason raised his brow again, and Calla did it right back, “We know better than to assume anything, especially if it affects two people. And that’s just who we know of. I still need to check with police reports and some of the others. You’re the easiest to find most days though.”  
Jason nodded, “Okay. Anything I can do to help?”  
Calla’s jaw ticked, “I don’t know yet, but if I need anything I’ll call.”  
Jason nodded, “I’ll do the same. Stay safe.”  
Calla nodded, “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this, take care of yourself.”  
Jason nodded.

Calla didn’t have to fake the look of disgust that crossed her face-Lynn’s face, when a man who had somehow been cleared for this leaned in and leered.  
His breath stank and his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. Looking at her like an object, not a person, and he asked her in a way that wasn’t quite subtle enough to get away with about her and her boy’s sex life.  
She told him in no uncertain terms to fuck right off. When she saw Klarion waiting for her as she reached her bike though, her heart eased. She knew why she was doing this, and she wasn’t even close to being ready to give it up.

Cas cocked her head, “I haven’t, but I have noticed a heightened sense of anxiety and discomfort in certain areas of the cities at certain times on certain days.”  
Calla’s eyes narrowed, “Can you tell me about them and what they started?”  
Cas nodded and reached for a pad of paper and a pen.

Lynn and Cole smiled, sweet and shy, and bored and unimpressed respectively. Dick laughed inside when a reporter asked Cole-Klarion, if he thought if he was going to hell for his life decisions.  
Klarion grinned ferally and said, faux-sweetly, “With you I’m already there.”

Damian side-eyed her.  
Calla sighed, “Look, Damian. I think something is happening and I need information to figure out what. So just tell me if you’ve felt off while out in the city, where and when and if you’ve noticed anything from Bruce and I’ll be out of your hair.”  
Damian stared for another long moment, then stood to grab his patrol-log book.

Barbara frowned, “You think… What, exactly?”  
Calla ran her thumb over the edge of her phone, “I think Scarecrow is up to something. Something big, something wide-spread. I need to know if anything has come up in the recent blood tests or if you’ve noticed anything unusual on the charts or with the vitals of anyone in the clan.”  
Barbara wrinkled her nose a little, but wheeled herself back around to her computer and began typing, “I need to check the blood tests individually, since those are filed automatically and I’m not sure if anyone’s had the time to check them this month, but I did notice something a little off in some of the vitals on the chart….”  
Calla watched over her shoulder as Barbara brought up the blood tests required to get into the cave from the manor that, along with identifying the person entering, also tested their blood and the levels of certain things in them. Namely, the biggest secondary purpose of it was to monitor the levels of certain chemicals and toxins in the blood and alert Bruce and Alfred if any of them got over a certain point.  
In specific Joker venom, fear gas, the base components of every mind-control serum or ray they’d ever stumbled across, and certain types of radiation.  
Calla’s eyes narrowed at the sight. Fear toxin levels within the past 4-5 months were higher than normal by a fairly large amount for all of them, not just ones out in the field, but not high enough that they were within the range that Bruce had set the system to alert him to.  
Barbara made a noise Calla couldn’t decipher, ad brought up the vital’s chart over it.  
It’s a simple line graph with options to change who’s vital’s you’re seeing and over what length of time, and Barbara clicks ‘All’ and over the past year.  
All of them had begun to spike unusually increasingly often over the past few months from their established norms  
Barbara shot Calla a look, half worried, half grateful, and Calla nodded to her, before asking, “Where should we start looking for how it’s being administered?”  
Barbara bit her lip before she cocked her head, “Let me talk to Bruce. I’ll call you when we have anything.”  
Calla nodded, squeezed Barbara’s shoulder, and left. She had things to do today until Barbara and Bruce figured something out. She’d be antsy as hell until they contacted her, but still. She was an adult who paid bills and taxes and she wouldn’t shirk her responsibilities because she was nervous.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick is such a good brother. Totally. He is.  
> Also people fucking suck but we knew that already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about twitter, so sorry if anythings off. All user names and comments are pulled out of my ass to help progress the story

Dick belonged to Calla and Klarion, and they belonged to him. He knows that. Knows it in his bones as surely as he knows the force of a kick that will send a fully grown man flying, and that when he leaps from a building so high that the air goes thin and his ears pop that he won’t ever touch the ground.

Dick had hated when people, couples said that before, that they belonged to their partners. Still did, to be honest. People were people, the couldn’t  _ belong _ to other human beings, no matter what they did, he had to believe that.

He was not an object, and they did not own him, but they all belonged to each other all the same.

Calla and Klarion both had vicious, possessive streak a mile wide. Both of them would absolutely kill for him or each other, and the messed up thing is that he doesn’t entirely mind, not really. He’s not innocent(he doesn’t think about how he’s a killer too, how the Joker would be dead if not for Bruce, he doesn't), but he would never revel in the blood and violence the way they do. Criminals don’t fear him the way they fear Calla and what she can, will do, even without her powers(he can’t admit it but her certain flare of violence makes heat curl in his gut and for him to want to slot himself between her thighs and watch her bite the pale line of Klarion’s neck. He thinks they both know anyway).

She leaves people broken and glossy eyed in her wake. He knows that most of them don’t ever fully recover, but that’s the best Bruce can get from her, the promise to not kill deliberately unless she needs to.

And he knows, knows deep inside himself that she would never hunt or hurt someone for speaking badly of her. She does not care what people think or say about herself, but also because she didn’t think she was worth defending in a part of herself she did herself to smother and hide.

To her, it’s Klarion, it’s him, it’s her siblings and his and even Bruce. She would maim or kill someone for speaking badly about any of them. So would Klarion.

Which was why, Dick was very, very, very,  _ very _ glad that Calla despised Twitter as a social media platform with all the fire of every star that had ever and would ever burn in their universe and that Klarion was… less than interested. In social media in general. Because if either of them saw the things he was seeing on them, a lot of people would be in a lot of pain, and Dick didn’t think he had the amount of self control to stop them.

Part of it for Calla, he thinks, is that she’s lost almost everything she’s ever had. She’d been trained by life and bad people and people who she should have been able to trust to think that if something good happened, it was temporary at best.

Even her siblings, her sisters and brother had strained relationships in one way or another that enforced that belief that nothing good lasts longer than it took for it to hurt to be taken away.

He and Klarion had done well, been trying to do well in wiping her mind clean of that particular process, and they’d made some process. But Calla knew better than anyone that nothing was permanent(it was painful, sometimes, to watch her. She was a nester by nature, desperately wanted to make everything warm and cozy, to smell like them and feel safe, but to do that in a way that she wouldn’t hate it for being half-assed she had to plant roots, and she’d been horrifically punished for it every time she had before in her life. The conflict of instincts was obvious and made Dick’s heart ache).

Klarion was a whole other grab bag of issues, too used to being used and feared and manipulated. He was violent, and even how, half healed and whole was shocked breathless when they didn’t pounce on the rare moments of vulnerability. That they didn’t demand loyalty and boons from him moment and laugh in his face the next and throw him aside when he wasn’t of use.

Dick thought(though he couldn’t be sure, could never be sure with him) that that was why Klarion was so protective and loyal to them, so eager to do magic for them and give them gifts, because they didn’t use him, because they loved him and he’d never had that before. That hurt him too. It was a bit rediculous, that the two people he loved, the people he’d chosen and wanted, desprately to spend the rest of his life with hurt him without even trying, by just being themselves.

But they made him happy too. He’d been happy with Babs and Kori, his flings with Wally and Helena had been good. But no one had ever made his chest ache with how full of light and glee and love it was before, not like this.

He’d never felt lighter and better with just a brush of lips to his temple and a blazing heat under his arm. Bickering over movies and comfortable silence’s over books. It fit. It was right, and good. He softened their edges, they drew the feral furosity he so tried to pretend didn’t lurk under the surface out and he never felt badly for it.

Which was why Calla and Klarion could never, ever see what he was looking at right now. Because they would kill a shitload of people for speaking badly about him and each other, and Bruce would imprison them, and then their issues would be disected by some doctor who didn’t care about them and Dick would be alone.

So they couldn’t see the comments clogging up his Twitter account, because that would be Bad, with a capital B.

Jason sighed long sufferingly and looked at the ceiling for patience, “So why the fuck are you talking to me about this?”

Dick blinked at him, “Because you’re my brother and Calla’s best friend.”

Jason inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, “I ask again, why?”

Dick cocked his head, “Because I value what you have to say, Jay.”

Jason made a sound like a frustrated sob and hid his face in his hands, “Dick, it is 5 in the morning. You can through my window. I was not awake, and you came through my window and woke me up. And you won’t stop talking non-sense. I want to be asleep Dick.”

Dick made a face at him, “Rude. See if I come to you the next time I have a problem.”

Jason made another sound into his palms, “God, please don’t.”

Dick ‘hurrumph’ed, and climbed back out Jason’s window. He’d leave the screen-shots on Jason’s counter. Jason would understand in the morning.

 

Jason stared down at the six papers left in front of his coffee pot at-he glanced at the clock- 11:09 the next morning. A sticky note with Dick’s bold, sloppy print on it was stuck to the top, and the sight of it alone, never mind what it said made Jason want very, very badly to put it through a shredder and then leave it at the bottom of his neighbors composting bin on the roof without even looking at them.

_ Here’s a sample. I tried to reflect the ratio of support to hate well. _

_ -Dick _

In the end though, he chugged two cups of black coffee to wake him up, took the papers to the table, and looked through them because he was an adult, and knew now things like this wouldn’t just go away because he ignored it. God he missed the ignorance of youth. Or at least the relative ignorance. He’d never been naive.

 

**Monmonmon(@nomnomnom)**

_ So is no one going to adress the fact that that Cole fucker is shady af???? #sketchy #golddigger _

 

Jason made a face, but his eyes skipped to the next. As far as he could see none of these were connected except for the obvious that they were about public opinion regarding Dick, Calla, and Klarion..

 

**RobinBobbin(@bobbybaby)**

_ If @DickGrayson wants to date two people thats his porogitive or whatever but how the fuck do the three of them fit in a bed together?? Seriously, so many bony elbows _

 

**CyinideCynic(@SweetSweetPoison)**

_ tbh Dick Grayson and his partners are cute as hell #cute #sweet #polyrepresentation #lovewins _

 

**Notallmen(@KeepYourSilence)**

_ i’ll just say it. that lynn bitch is greedy af. wtf needs two guys. sucking two dicks doesnt make you special or brave sweetie :) _

 

Jason took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and read on.

The kindness ended after that. There were exactly 4 more that didn’t accuse the three of them of working with the devil, rejecting god, corrupting youths, being greedy, sluts, monsters, sociopaths, ect. Calling them horrible, horrible things. Jason would not know this because he stopped reading on the fourth page and only saw two of them.

Jason put the papers down halfway through the first page, got up, and went to get more coffee. He was almost at the end of the second page when he started skimming to preserve his sanity and what little remained of his faith in humanity.

At the end of the third he stood, took deep breaths, and tried to remember the breathing techniques Bruce had taught him as Robin. About a third through the fourth, he gave up, dragged a shredded he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d gotten it from, smacked it around until it worked, and shredded all of it, even the sticky note.

Then he grabbed the shitty, old, rusted, cast iron pan from the bottom cupboard that had been in the apartment when he’d moved in, doused the remains in lighter fluid, and tossed a few lit matches onto it.

He waited until after it was all torched, poked around in the ashes for a few moments to ensure it was all  _ really _ torched, then pulled out his phone to send Dick a text.

_ I see the problem _

 

Calla squinted at Dick, where he was worrying his thumb-nail between his teeth, one of his only tells, and looking at his phone.

“What is it?” She asked, sitting a little more upright.

Dick’s eyes snapped to her, and she held them as she got to her knees and eased to settle herself atop his lap, leaning in to rest her forearms on his shoulders and thread her fingers through his hair.

His hands dropped, letting his phone slip to the cushions beside them as he stroked long fingers up and down her thighs.

“Lots of things.”

Calla chuckled, leaned in to draw his lips between her teeth and kiss him.

He pressed up and into her, winding around her and close to kiss her back before withdrawing and dropping his forehead to her shoulder, then adjusting to mouth at her throat.

Calla hummed and pressed down, close, “What has you so worried though?”

Dick nuzzled, kissed, nipped, flicked his tongue to sooth the sting, and spoke against her skin.

“I’m just worried is all. Nothing is happening the way we thought it would, and I’m concerned where it’s heading.”

Calla nodded, pressed her own lips to Dick’s hair as he sucked a hickey into the hollow of her throat.

He gave a throaty moan when she scratched her nails along his scalp and melted under her, and Calla murmered into his ear, “Tell me what’s on your mind, love.”

Dick made an incoherent whimper as she petted his hair and scratched again, and every muscle in his body relaxed as his eyes fell shut.

Klarion’s head popped around the corner, intrest in the noises Dick was making stark in his expression, and Calla mouthed to him, “Interogation.”

Klarion nodded as watched as Calla kissed Dick’s head tenderly and held his head against her chest and made him unravel with her nails on his scalp again.

Dick sighed deeply and puled Calla closer, “I’m angry about some of the things that have been said online, and worried about how you both would react if you saw them.”

Calla didn’t tense. She knew it would be something like that, so she stayed loose and relax where she was across Dick’s lap and gently ran her nails from his hairline down to his shoulders. She petted cool fingers across the skin there, ran her hand back up to cup the back of his head, combing and playing with the hair there.

Klarion eased closer on silent feet, “What have they been saying?”

Dick leaned in, burying his face in Calla’s chest, and Calla laughed quietly tilting her head to hide him in her curls as he kisses down from her collar bones, down her sternum to mouth at the swells of her breasts where they were exposed by the low cut of the tanktop she wore.

“What does it matter?” Calla murmered, “We’ve done all we can. It might take a month or two, but I imagine now that they have an idea of who we are the frenzy will die down. I’ve pulled a few strings, arranged for a few distractions to pop up. All we can do now is wait.”

Klarion slunk closer, nodding, conceding the point as he leaned down to kiss Calla over Dick’s head.

Dick shifted, his mouth gentle, teeth sharp against her breasts, and he let out a soft little moan as Calla tilted her head back and lifted the hand she’d had on Dick’s shoulder to Klarion’s jaw, cradling his face as she licked her way into his mouth.

He murmered something against her skin, hot and wet from his tongue, and while Calla was too distracted kissing Klarion and petting Dick’s hair and savoring this sweet, perfect moment to make out exactly what was being said, she heard the words ‘ _ fucking hot’  _ and  _ ‘lucky’ _ , so she felt she got the jist of it. She certainly agreed.

Klarion’s hands found the back of Calla’s head, hauling her up a bit, balanced on her knees rather than sitting on Dick’s thighs, tugging on her hair just right for the pull of pleasure-pain-pleasure to send sparks of pleasure burning across her skin. She whimpered, a breathless, bitten off, gasp of a sound.

Calla wanted to rip off her shirt, then her pants then theirs, take them right there on the living room floor, but Dick’s hands were on her hips, supporting her weight and drawing his thumbs over her hip bones, the soft flesh of her stomach, and she just knew from how he was holding her, the slow, languid way he kissed her chest and shoulders and neck, from the way Klarion’s hands carded through her hair, pulling just right, that that wasn’t going to happen.

They’d tease her, draw her pleasure and theirs out like a bow string, long and taut. She was too glad to feel them against her to care. Heat and the press and pull and- _ oh god _ , she loved these idiots so fucking much it burned. When she was without them one day it would kill her.

She hoped it was her without them one day though, despite the pain, because she knew if she died before them, and if one of them died, leaving one of them alone it would kill the last one, two, however many were left, just as much. She’d rather she be the one in that pain, she’d rather take that burden from them.

Then Klarion did something with his teeth that made her melt and Dick was running his hands up her waist and under her shirt and she couldn’t think past the want anymore.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one that's pretty much just torture and 110% unplanned but also some comfort at the end so.... yeah. Have fun with that.

Calla woke. She woke to barbed wire digging into the flesh of her wrists and forearms, blood, hot and thick, drip-drip-dripping to the concrete beneath her from the places the flesh had given way under the way the wire dug in to hold her body weight.

She came awake all at once, though she didn’t let it show, eyes closed, body still.

Calla took stock. Her mask was on her face, the feel of it unmistakable, but her coat and boots had been removed, and so had her over-shirt. She was left in a camisole and leather pants. Her toes just barely brushed the ground as she swung lazily from where she was suspended, and they felt damp and sticky with what might have been her own blood, pooling under her.

The air was cool and damp, and her own breaths seemed over-loud in the way that came from wide, silent spaces.

And-Wait. Calla’s mind paused and went over that again. The air felt cool. She… She didn’t feel external cold. Not for a long, long time.

Calla forced her eyes open, and lifted her head.

She was underground, she thought. Maybe a basement storage area for a warehouse? It was empty save for her, and-she glanced up- and the barbed wire wrapped around her hooked to a hook and a track that crossed the room. Some kind of cow or pig slaughterhouse then. She made a face, then frowned and cocked her head.

There was something around her neck. A collar of some kind.

Her heart skipped a beat. Some kind of meta-human suppression collar then. Had to be. She felt warm inside and could feel cold outside and while that wasn’t… That wasn’t quite something she wanted to give up, there was no way in hell that this was a good thing. That anything good could come from it.

So Calla listened and looked around.

No one and nothing. Not even decrepit machinery. The only light spilled in from the double swinging doors at least 30 yards away from her, from the hall she could just glimpse through the old, foggy windows, but it was enough to make out the room and that there weren’t any visible cameras. Not even any blinking lights in the dark/

No sound, not something from another room, no voices. No cars, however distant, no bugs or the skittering of rats. Only her own breath, the dripping of her blood, the soft sound of metal on metal scraping quietly as she swayed and the thud-thud-thud of her heart in her own ears.

Deep breath. How did she get here?

She thought back, trying desperately to scramble her memory together. She had been on patrol, right at the tail end. She’d been a little scraped up, a little bruises, but nothing too bad.

Babs had told her that they’d suspected some of the fear toxin was being administered through water, though they had no proof, the test samples they’d tested had been clean, but she had been near an easy access point so would she pretty please do a little snooping and see if she found anything suspicious?

Calla had agreed because the case had been bothering her and hey, she worked from home most days so she would just sleep in since nothing urgent was on the schedule.

It got a little foggier after that. She’d found Crane in an abandoned subway tunnel that had access to one of the main water lines for the city, doing mad science.

They’d fought, then he’d gotten her with a syringe in her neck. She’d hit her panic button, then… lights out.

They’d be looking for her. Calla never, never ever ever hit her panic button if she could help it.It had gotten her into shit more than once. And since her com was gone from her ear, since she wouldn’t have replied to their check ins after pressing her panic button while on a run for Oracle regarding a known case and in the sewers…. Well, the Bat Clan didn’t take that shit lightly. Her boys didn’t take that shit lightly. They’re be combing the city and shaking down every source and snitch they had.

Calla let her head fall back, and studied the torn up mess that was her wrists and forearms. Blood, barbed wire wound so tightly there wasn’t a hope of wiggling free.

Her boots and dagger were gone, her grappling hooks had been taken and so had all of her weaponry and tech, but maybe…

Calla scrabbled blood-slick fingers until she found the hook that she was hooked up to, grasping tight as she took a deep breath and curled her body up.

Her natural ability to use her toes to grasp at things freaked Klarion the hell out, but if she could use them to peel the barbed wire off her arms she’d take all the fun he’d ever poked at them and then some.

Still, she wasn’t Dick, and flexibility and core strength were not her strengths. Calla’s strengths lent themselves to pain resistance, swift dodges and attacks, and brutality.

It took a long moment to find the chain with one foot to steady herself, then use the other to feel for the end of the barbed wire, which opened a series of short cuts along her toes and the balls of her feet, and Calla grimaced. Just because she could handle pain didn’t mean she had to like it, and holy hell her stomach was burning with the effort to hold the position. And shit, she really had no clue how her powers affected her ability to perform physically did she?

She shouldn’t be struggling this much. She wouldn’t be able to do this for long normally, but she should not be having this much trouble. This wouldn’t work. She’d still try, she knew better than to give up, but it was a doomed attempt, she could already tell.

Calla gritted her teeth, and finally found the edge of the wire with her toes, and pulled, peeling a long line of it away from the side of her hand and around her wrists.

Then the sound of footsteps forced her to stop, bunching the wire up on the back side of her forearm, and quickly unfolding herself back down, her toes brushing the ground and head lolled back, fingers grasping the hook.

She forced herself to look dazed, eyes unfocused and lips parted, entire body slack and loose just as the doors burst open.

Even as her eyelids fluttered shut, her mind was whirling. At least 5 sets of footsteps, and if she could get down, yeah, maybe she could take them all. She’d need to be careful, and smart, but she had spent her first year as an adult being tortured 24/7. If that didn’t give you pain tolerance and an ability to think and work past it, nothing would. The biggest problem would be the bloodloss, but if she could get her damned collar off, hear heart would slow enough that it wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

A hand caught her chin, pulled her face down, and Cala opened her eyes, blinking slowly at Crane were he stood before her and-he was on a fucking stool. Calla bit her tongue and resisted the urge to howl with laughter because holy hell Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, one of the fiercest, most twisted and deadly villains that Gotham had to offer had to stand on a stool to look her in the face and he was still a few inches shorter than her, strung up as she was!

Crane’s eyes narrowed as he registered the mirth dancing in hers and without warning he backhanded her across the face. If not for his other hand having moved from her jaw to her bicep, she’d have gone swinging with the blow, as it was all she did was wiggle her tongue around her mouth to feel for any teeth he might have knocked loose.

When she was sure he hadn’t, she grinned at him, teeth bared, and purred, silk smooth and low and deadly, “Oh Crane, I thought you knew you couldn’t scare me by now?”

Crane bared his own teeth in a snarl, “Everyone is afraid of something!”

Calla shook her head and chuckled, “Not me, not of you.”

Cran laughed and snapped his fingers behind him blindly at his men, “Let us test that.”

Calla didn’t know what she was expecting. A knife, maybe. Knives were cool. A classic. Maybe a good old set of brass knuckles. Hey, maybe even waterboarding. Well, probably not that last one. If her collar shorted out they were fucked, and, unfortunately, Crane was smart enough to realize that.

One of the goons digging through a back pack and handing over a fucking cattle prod was not what she was expecting.

Calla laughed, she couldn’t help it. She’d been electrocuted by a great many things in her day. Cattle prods were not even number ten on the list of most painful.

Which is why, why Calla bit clean through her lip, breath hitching body seizing, muscles spasming, entire world going _white_ with pain, she realized in the shaking, panting aftermath that, no, that was not a standard issue cattle prod. No way in hell.

When she pointed that out, Crane laughed and nodded, touching the device how one might a lover, and said, “You noticed! It’s true I had to have some adjustments made, but I do love the look of it.”

Then electricity was ripping through her again, and while this was not nearly as bad as her time with Killer Frost, it still fucking _hurt_ , and even Calla couldn’t help the screams ripping free of her throat.

It was gone then, and Calla forced herself to breath through the spot behind her ribs where it felt like her heart had been carved out and replaced with a twitchy bowling ball, heavy and jumping and fucking _fucking_ **_fuck_ **!

Calla’s head was lolled against her chest, and she could hear the shuffling of Crane just beyond her sightline.

His voice crooned too close, “Oh, have you given up already? I’d have thought you’d have a better pain tolerance.”

Calla sucked in a breath and spoke, “When I get this wire out of me, I’m going to hunt down you and every member of your group and slowly, methodically do to each of you what you do to me Crane.”

Crane laughed, “Are you, are you really?”

Calla’s breath was beginning to stabilize, “I am. In fact, I think I’ll even go to the trouble of using your own tools. So, two long shocks. Your move.”

Crane sounded less amused, “But the bat-”

Calla cackled, “The bat can go fuck himself. I care more about watching you writhe in agony than about his aprova- Aahhh!”

Calla cut herself off with a sharp cry as the cattle prod was shoved against her side.

When the pain subsided enough to speak, she spat out, “Three.”

The blow to her ribs, and then the sucker punch to her kidney that followed didn’t hurt nearly as badly as the shocks that preceded it.

 

Calla might have said later, when telling the story, depending who it was being told to, that she didn’t know how long she had been tortured. Might have downplayed the fact that while, yeah, she reacted to the pain because that was a natural human responce that even Bruce had difficulty denying while being tortured, she had way, way more experience with torture and pain than almost anyone else she knew. Even excluding Killer Frost, she had been beaten, stabbed, shot, kidnapped and damn near shredded almost more times than Dick(who’d been in the business for over 15 years compared to her 5), by sheer proxy of the fact that she made enemies the way some people said ‘bless you’ after a sneeze.

To say that she didn’t know how long she’d been tortured for though was a lie. She knew. She counted heart beats between blows, between shocks, between lines of burning metal on her legs and arms, between carturizing-hot knives shoved into just the right spot to keep her alive, to keep her in pain.

It was 17 hours, give or take a few blinding moments of agony that nearly matched Killer Frost and all she’d done, after she woke up, that she sensed the change in the air that came from a bat slipping silent and unnoticed into a shadow.

Crane grinned maniacally up at her, taking glee in the way she flinched back when his hand landed meaningfully on her shoulder.

She squirmed, panted, because while she could handle a dislocated shoulder, the weight her hanging would put on it might fuck up the joint and it would deffinately render her damned useless.

He grinned that crazy grin up at her, and asked, “Are you afraid?”

Calla laughed, choked on her own blood from the lip that would need to be stitched back together, “Not of you.”

Crane snarled at her stubbornness, and slammed her shoulder out of its socket as he roared, “Everyone is afraid of something! Admit it! Admit your fear!”

Calla laughed, hoarse and more of a cough than anything, “I’m afraid of one thing in this world, just one, Crane. And it isn’t you, or pain. It isn’t something you or your toxin can use against me.”

Crane moved his hand up, cupping the side of her face almost gently, a razor-edged contrast to the brutality of only moments before, “Well there’s only one way to know for sure now, isn’t there? Let’s see that pretty face and do a little digging.”

His forefinger and thumb plucked at the edge of her mask, rolled up the adhesive- and Calla rolled her body up like she had to tug at the barbed wire(and god it hurt so much more, she burned and ached and was covered in blood, her shoulder, her stomach, the burns on her calves, but she powered through it, used it as rage and used it), and kicked out hard enough to send him flying back a foot, skidding to a stop on the floor with a sickening ‘crack’ when his skull met the concrete.

The other four men had their guns out and aimed at her, but other than that didn’t move.  
Calla resisted the urge to snarl, to snap and sneer and threaten him.

Instead she laughed, breathless and forced, almost cracked coming out, “Hey, consent asshole, try it.”

Crane shoved to his feet, face a mask of rage, and Calla did snarl then, an inhuman growl of a sound that sounded so different, so much smaller without her powers to change her voice and steal any heat from the air.

He laughed, sauntered closer to her again, “Oh this is sweet. I was rushing wasn’t I, before. This is something to be savored. The deadly and fear Permafrost, weak and alone!”

Another voice chimed in, so low and furious Calla didn’t recognise it for a moment, “She isn’t though.”

A figure stepped out of a shadow that Calla knew had not been there before, solidifying into the form of the Black Bat, Cass. Calla’s stomach relaxed with relief so suddenly that it hurt, and her breath came easier.

Another voice, male, and just as angry chimed in as Red Robin, Tim, slipped silently through the doors, “None of the bats are ever alone. You know that.”

Calla  lashed out, hooked one leg around his neck as he went pale, as Cass and Tim took down the goons and a few more figures surged through the doors, and squeezed.

He clawed and choked, fingers digging into her bare skin, leaving scratches and more blood in his wake as she choked him out, but she was merciless.

He’d hurt her. He had hurt her and even if a hand was pulling her leg off as he went limp, even as Dick’s hands ghosted along her side and Jason cursed and struggled with the barbed wire as Steph fiddled with the collar, she wanted to hurt him back as much as she could while she could.

Dick’s hands, feather light and still firm cupped either side of her neck as the collar came away, and she finally looked up, away from where she was watching as Bruce struggled to pry her legs out from around a purple Crane, watching as she realized she could kill him, just shift a little, get one foot on either side of his face and apply pressure, snap his neck, no one could stop her, not in time.

But Dick had her throat so gently and Bruce was speaking calmly to her for once, everyone was speaking but she couldn’t hear them.

So she let him go, and she looked at her partner, and she let herself fall into him.

Too many hands, all stroking at her hair, her arms, her back. But she knew them all. Dick’s on her nape and her cheek, Jason’s on her hair, Cass’s at the small of her back and Steph rubbing her shoulder. Damian’s hand, there and gone too fast at her wrist, the bloody mess of it.

The Bruce loomed close for just a moment when she was turned away to have her back to Dick’s chest. He swore, looking at her, then said something as unconsciousness swam closer, mouth set in a line.

She would realize later he was telling her he was proud of her restraint, of how she held out, that she was safe now.

But that was everybody, her whole family, Dick’s whole family, all crowding close and quick before they were off, whisking her off for medical treatment as she lost the battle she hadn’t realized she’d been fighting for hours to stay awake.

 

Calla woke in the med-bay just long enough to find out that she’d been missing for over 48 hours, and realize that that meant she and Klarion had missed the interview with Clark and Lois she’d managed to arrange. Then, as she was sedated, she managed to communicate to Dick that she was going to murder Crane for getting in the way of the one press event she was in any way looking forward to.

Bruce had assured her that that wouldn’t be necessary, he’d reschedule with Clark as she fell back asleep. She had been quite convincing after all. Besides, Clark was a soft touch. If he mentioned the torture, it wouldn’t be an issue. It was a damned good excuse as far as they went, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have watched the first half episode of the punisher before bed, have a fever dream about Calla and him beating the shit out of each other, then woken up and written this. I do not claim any kind of method to my madness.
> 
> Also please please please comment? It makes my soul happy.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was all written on my phone and I hated every second of it except for my brief proof reading at the end.

Calla came too in the med bay of the batcave, mouth full of the nasty taste that came from dehydration and pain medication, her mind fuzzy. Her eyes lolled open, and she glanced around.

Dick, face pinched with worry, chin perched on his knee, eyes staring, unfocused in the vague direction of the middle of her bed.

Her eyes slid past him after a moment scanning him for anything worrisome. A bag of blood being pumped into her arms, the burning, wonderful warmth of it in the chill of her veins. A bag with a clear liquid on her other side, saline maybe, or the nutrient blend Alfred favored when one of them was unconscious for long periods of time, depending how long she’d been out.

A little further, where her vision was only just clear enough to identify them, Jason and Klarion were snarking, words indistinct but neither of them truly upset, just passing time if their tones were any indication.

Calla took a deep breath and her ribs creaked and burned with it, the kind that came from cracks at the very least. Fuck. Calla was fuzzy on what had happened with sleep pressing to heavy on her mind, but something had happened. Something she should probably remember.

Calla’s fingers twitched when she tried to reach over and put her fingers in Dick’s hair, but that was it. Her limbs were too heavy for anything else.

Dick noticed anyway, scrambling to lean forward, latching his fingers through hers and their eyes meeting briefly. Her face hurt when she  smiled at him, a small, cocky thing, just to reassure him, but she did it anyway.

Then she was being pulled under again despite Dick yelling for Klarion. She just glimpsed his warm brown eyes long enough to recognise them before she was asleep again.

 

Calla drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, always coming to with Dick or Klarion or both in sight. Sometimes it was just an instant, eyes flicking open and a distant ache before the exhaustion of healing and drugs dragged her back down, sometimes it was a moment. Regaining her mind for enough time to catch Dick or Klarion’s eye and smile and for a stray thought, the discomfort of a dry throat or annoyance of sleeping on her back to filter through, then she’d be gone again. A few times she woke long enough to have some ice, listen to Alfred calmly explaining what had happened, and attempt to slur out thoughts.

 

Dick was pissed. He rarely got pissed, not like this. But Calla was in and out of consciousness for the 5th day straight and regardless of her enhanced healing, she’d have life long scars from the things Scarecrow had done.

He hated worrying about Calla. He worried about her all the time of course, because that was what loving someone was, watching their back and always worrying for the parts of them you couldn’t protect. But Calla was an amazing fighter. She was smart, had good instincts. She was a survivor. That was, at its heart, what her skills boiled down into, her desperate, unbreakable will to survive and her willingness to do anything, learn anything, to do so.

And so he didn’t have to worry about her in that aspect much. Maybe if she was pushing herself to hard or where her mind was wandering, but when she was on patrol, when she wasn’t in his sight, he didn’t have to stress overly much about if she would come back home to him safely.

The fact that Scarecrow had hurt her badly enough that even perched beside her bed he felt every time he blinked she would fade away, it made him furious.

He wanted to go out, hit something, someone, make Scarecrow  _ bleed  _ for hurting his girl, who might be named for a flower and might play deilcate when it suited her, but who was anything but.

The fact that  _ he  _ would be the one who would need make Scarecrow bleed, not Calla, eyes alight with fury and vengence for her own pain only stoked that flame of rage hotter.

He would be now, hunting Scarecrow, who had managed to escape from the  **_incompitent_ ** hands of the Gotham PD in transport, except that Klarion and Jason had left yesterday in the evening to do so after Calla had had a nightmare and thrashed so violently that she’d torn 12 of her 92 stitches, even restrainted by Cass, Bruce, Jason, and him as she was, and they weren’t back yet. It was a rule of theirs, if one of them was injured, they weren’t to wake alone, not unless there was no other choice.

So Dick sat here, slipping ice chips into her mouth when she woke enough to comunicate to him she wanted one, verbally or otherwise, and feeling a little better than useless.

But he wasn’t. For all he felt twitchy and like he could vibrate right out of her skin, he wasn’t. Calla needed someone here with her, and while he might have wanted to be out scowering the city for that bastard, he would have been distracted the entire time, thinking of Calla. He was right where he needed to be, he knew that.

At least he wasn’t alone. Katie and Alex had come in, though Katie had only stayed for half an hour before leaving. She’d promised she’d call him with news, though news of what he wasn;t sure.

Her brother had stayed for longer, a few hours before he’d stood and assured her that he would contact Calla’s assistants and let them know that Calla wasn’t well enough to work. She wouldn’t need to worry about the store until she was well enough to start working again.

Dinah had stopped in too. Dick had never been able to quite pin down the kind of relationship that they had. Friend or family? Little sister or daughter? Student or neice? Whatever the case, it was a bond that held strong, no matter how long they spent apart.

Dick suspected, in the observant, cold part of his mind that was always running that Dinah had filled the void in Calla’s life that had been left when she thought herself betrayed by Katie, and even after bridges had been mended, that had been enough for Calla to devote the full force of her loyalty to the older woman, which was no small feat. There was a list, only 6 or 7 people long who Calla was 100%, unwaveringly loyal to. Him and Klarion, Jason, Dinah, her brother and younger sisters, and maybe a few other members of his own family. Katie had been on that list once. She wasn’t quite anymore.

And Dinah, she was the type to be loyal in turn to the broken girl who would fight, kill, die for her without hesitation that Calla had been when they’d met, when Dinah had first decided that Calla was hers to protect and teach. Neither were the type who’s loyalty faded with time or distance, either.

When Dinah had left after a few hours, with only a black look on her face and a growl that she was going hunting, Dick had grinned.

No matter how Calla perpetually underestimated the lengths to which others would go for her, she now had most of the bat clan and several others hunting Scarecrow down, and that made a feral part of Dick very, very happy.

Dick mildly hoped that Dinah, Jason, or Klarion found him. If Dick couldn’t hit him, he would at least be satisfied by the ammount of damage done to him by any of those three were the ones to find him. Maybe Katie too, though Dick didn’t know her well enough to know if she was looking for Scarecrow or someone or something else. In all honesty most of Calla’s relationships with most people confused him. She tended to have five catigories with people, people who were hers, friends who she tended to click with in odd, vicious ways, even Timmy tended bare the sharpened blade at his core around her(or go soft and pliable in the way of soft and fluffy things when they were in the talons of a hawk, but they were an odd pair for friends regardless), respect, hateful respect, or she simply didn’t see them as worth more of her time than it usually took for her to beat the shit out of them(The Joker and Scarecrow).

Katie, as far as he could tell, was her own sixth catagory. Loved, but held at a distance. Calla was loyalty-bound to her(which was the only way Dick could think of it, because once given it would take death to sever Calla’s loyalty), but unwilling to let her closer than she needed to after all that had happened between them.

Dick hoped in a vicious part of himself he always kept very, very tightly leashed, that Scarecrow was at least as badly hurt when he was brought in as Calla was when they had found her. He wouldn’t allow himself to hope for anything else, but he let himself hope for that.

 

Calla was better. At least, she was better enough that she wanted her family back from where they’d gone like dogs to dig Scarecrow out of whatever den he was hiding in.

She’d awoken truly after days of unconciousness knowing that something was wrong. Dick, Cas, Steph, Bruce, and Tim had all been by her side when she’d awoken for the past few days, but not Klarion or Jason or Alex. And that… That was telling.

Klarion alone leaving to hunt the Scarecrow, sure. He was a wild, violent thing, and if Dick was distracted he could and would have slipped off to hunt down the monster. But he only ever hunted with her. Not with Dick, with Jason, with his mother or sister. Only her. 

She wasn’t sure what exactly it said that he had left to do so with Jason at his side, but she knew it said something, and that it wasn’t something good.

After a few hours of tests and reassuring them that while weak and in a bit of pain, she was mostly fine, Dick slipped her her phone, and she locked herself into the medbay with only Dick and Alfred to overhear as she dialed Klarion.

 

It rang, and rang, and rang. And went to voicemail. Calla gritted her teeth, just a bit. She was sore, had a headache, and was torn between the exsaughtion that came with healing and the itchy needo1 to get up and move, run, anything other than sit still some more, and right now she just wanted Klarions blazing heat to burrow into and Dick’s gentle hands in her hair.

Given how furious Klarion was likely to be though, she knew she wasn't going to get that until he'd cooled off. His rage burned bright and true as all the flames of hell. Pure, for all that they were. Pure, if not a purity humanity thought of. He rarely truly raged these days, but this would have set him off, and Jason might have taken him to try and get him to let off some steam.

If he didn’t give up his hunt to keep her company, she’d be off to hunt him, no matter how badly hurt she was.

Another call, this one also missed. Alright, Jason then, surely he wouldn’t be as thoughtless as Klarion who had(presumably) put his phone on silent while Calla was on bedrest. Honestly. She knew Klarion was less than invested in most technology(she honestly only thought he had a cell phone at all so he could text her and Dick memes and use Tumblr, which he claimed was more entertaining than any tv show), but honestly now. His girlfriend was unconcious after being held captive and tortured, the least he could do if he was going to impersonate a tea kettle about to boil over was keep his phone on so that if there was an emergency he could be informed.

She dialed, and listened as it rang.

He didn’t pick up either.

Calla growled, and stood. When Dick moved to help her, she raised a brow and silently comunicated ‘back off, you’re sweet but I can’t handle much more hovering’. He paused, and gave her a nod, but his eyes watched her like a hawk as she made her way to the bathroom that ajoined to the medbay, and shut the door firmly behind her.

Calla paced the small space for a moment, flexed sore muscles and focused on her breathing. She wanted to hunt. She wanted to run and fight and ease the ache of muscles kept still for too long. She wanted to go back to sleep.

God she felt exsaughted, ready to keel over, and it was stupid, because she'd been awake for all of an hour and a half, but she wanted nothing more than to eat 20 burgers from that one wonderfully greesy corner shop by Dick's presienct with the accompanying fries and shakes and go back to sleep.

But she knew she wouldn't be able to, now that she was conscious enough to register Klarion's absence.

She wanted him burning his heat into her side so badly it felt like the physical ache of something missing from her.

So Calla stalked backinto the med bay, passing her own cot in favor of drapping herself across Dick in his chair in a way that almost made them tip over backwards if Dick hadn't readjusted their balance, but she was feeling too bad to care, just buried her face in his hair and let her teeth scrape his throat as she pressed her phone into his hand and growled wordlessly for a moment.

Dick relaxed and gave a low chuckle as he pulled her in closer and burries his fingers in her curls, a knotted, matted disarray after so long unattended.

Calla scowles at the tug of the knots ane snarled, low and irritated and entirely false into Dicks throat, which only had him laughing louder.

Calla drew back to stare down at him with narrowed, imperial golden eyes, chin lifted hautily in a way she knew was utterly ruined by how rumpled she was.

"I am an extremely powerful and dangerous metahuman, I run my own business and can fight just as well as almost anyone in your family. Stop laughing at me."

Dicks laughter deepened, and his hands found her waist to steady her, "You are all that, and more. But you are still incapable of deliberately being intimidating to someone who has seen you cry when you found the smallest kitten in the world and it liked Damian better."

Calla snarled and leaned further back even as her wounds gave a warning ache, "Fear me!"

Dick hauled her in by her hips and began kissing her everywhere but her lips, "Not a chance, sweetheart."

She whined and burried her face in his neck and held him close.

Dick only stifled more laughter as he held her gently, oh so gently, and only a bit of it was relieved. Calla only got like this, baring her teeth and claws one moment and whining the next in that adorable way of hers when she was tired and in pain and wanted something.

That was the thing about Calla. She would never dare, after the life she had led, ask for anything she really wanted outright. You had to press her, because for her entire existence until 5 years ago any kind of longing for anything was nothing more than a weapon to be wielded against her.

Disk started gently picking the knots from the end of her hair as she burrowed into him, freezing and perfect.

"What do you want, baby?"

Calla grumbled incoherently for a moment and Dick shifted to kiss her head.

"Babe, please, it'll make me feel better after so many days feeling useless, please give me something to go get for you? Pretty please, sweetheart?"

Calla released an exhale against his throat that he knew meant she was going to tell him.

"Can you help me shower, then go get Klarion and bring me 3 burgers from that amazing place by your precinct?"

Dick locked eyes with Alfred to be sure none of that was outside of what she should be doing as she healed, and Alfred smiled and nodded his assent.

So Dick helped his girl to her feet and started mentally trying to figure out where his boy might be by now as they walked towards the showers.


End file.
